The MRC's Anti-Abortion Extremists

State surveillance of women lest they cross state lines for an abortion? Smearing companies who offer abortion benefits to workers as servants of Moloch? That's how the Media Research Center attacks anyone who doesn't hate abortion like it does.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 10/12/2022

Aspen Institute wants less digital surveillance. Why? So that women can travel to abort their babies without anyone knowing.

In a May 11 Zoom lecture with Aspen Institute, speakers emphasized the importance of digital privacy in order to protect women who still want to kill their babies in areas where abortion is outlawed. The Aspen Institute speakers essentially pushed for less surveillance so that women won’t get in trouble when they commit the crime of abortion.

With the potential overturn of Roe V. Wade, abortion “rights” will no longer be set at the federal level but instead, decided by individual states. This is a big step for the pro-life movement as many red states will outlaw abortion — as they should.

Wafa Ben-Hassine from the Omidyar Network stated “The situation with the possibility of overturning Roe V. Wade just kind of demonstrates and highlights why it’s so important for us to move our attention back to the role of data brokers as well as the amount of consent that we have as users.” Data brokers are essentially the middle-men. Applications receive data from users, data brokers receive that data and then they sell and distribute it. Ben-Hassine is advocating for more privacy on our cell phones so that women can travel to get abortions even when it becomes illegal.

[...]

“This is all about users, about people, not giving consent to something and then having the long term, slippery slope implications of what that means,” Ben-Hassine claimed. Yeah, I bet the babies being killed from abortion aren’t consenting to their own slaughter but who cares about them anyway, right? My body, my choice?

Mandelburg didn't explain exactly why the right to privacy doesn't exist for women if they are thinking of having an abortion and traveling to a state where it's legal to do it. Instead, she went on to whine that "coined the phrase 'uterus surveillance' which he, though he has no uterus, was highly concerned about." Of course, "uterus surveillance" is something Mandelburg very much wants.

Mandelburg then upped her heated rhetoric by likening women who have abortions to serial killers:

During the meeting I submitted a question. I asked if these limited surveillance expectations should apply to other criminals too or just criminals of abortion. For example, if data is collected that pinpoints a serial killer to a specific crime, should that data be used against them or not? My question was not addressed in the Zoom nor in the email I sent Aspen afterward. Go figure.

Of course, the difference is that the legality of serial killing does not change by state. It seems that Mandelburg is so bloodthirsty against abortion that she wants to see women imprisoned and executed for having one.

Mandelburg concluded by reiterating her call for a Big Brother state and restating that pregnant women have no right to privacy or freedom of movement:

Should Americans have the right to privacy? Yes, but not when that privacy comes at the expense of innocent lives being aborted. Aspen Institute and every speaker they had on today advocated for more data privacy simply so that women can get away with the crime that is abortion. Talk about empowerment, am I right?

Mandelburg seems to be missing the point that her desired outcome of regulating abortion on the state level means that if abortion is legal in a certain state, it's not a crime for a woman to have one there, nor is it a crime for a woman to travel to that state to have one. Mandelburg is effectively endorsing a massive police state against women, and she offers no guidance on how that would work without violating the principles of freedom right-wingers like her purport to uphold.

The MRC freaked out about this discussion so much that it devoted a second post to it, from Jeffrey Clark on May 16. Clark managed to avoid saying the quiet part out loud like Mandelburg did, instead focusing on good old-fashioned George Soros conspiracy-mongering:

A shadowy organization funded with millions from radical leftist billionaire George Soros is now pushing for less digital surveillance and a freer world — for abortion, that is.

The Aspen Institute held a May 11 virtual roundtable to strategize how women can have secret abortions. The meeting followed soon after a Supreme Court leak appeared to signal the end of the infamous pro-abortion Roe v. Wade (1973) decision.

The Aspen Institute hosted speakers from a variety of powerful leftist groups, including the Omidyar Network and the Ford Foundation. One guest, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) attacked pro-life advocates as “extremists,” and called data tracking of women “uterus surveillance.”

But behind the scenes, two organizations within Soros’s Open Society network previously funneled massive amounts of cash into the Aspen Institute, totaling at least $3,039,780 between 2003 and 2020.

[...]

This is not the first time that Soros has pushed radical pro-abortion groups. The leftist mogul gave at least $25,274,455 to 11 radical abortion groups like the Planned Parenthood Action Fund between 2016 and 2020. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated in 2019 that the median cost for an abortion at 10 weeks’ gestation was $500. That is, Soros’ funding of 11 radical pro-abortion groups would be enough to pay for 50,548 abortions.

Clark then huffed that "Wyden absurdly claimed that overturning Roe is a “truly draconian infringement on women’s freedom and privacy” as he painted a dystopian world for women seeking abortions" and mocked one speaker for pointing out that states are considering criminalizing crossing state lines to get an abortion -- seemingly oblivious to the fact that just four days earlier, his co-worker endorsed that "absurd" draconian and dystopian monitoring of women to prevent them from engaging in freedom of movement in crossing state lines.

Mandelburg promoted her abortion-surveillance state again in a May 25 post:

As our nation preps for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, baby killing enthusiasts are freaking out. They’ve been protesting, pouting, and rallying all across America and now they're even calling for ways to abort kids illegally - and get away with it.

In a May 24 letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, dozens of Democrats demanded that Google stop collecting location data so that women can abort their babies without getting in trouble, according to Insider.

42 Dems penned the plea where they claimed, “Google's current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”

People who don't support killing babies are "far-right extremists" apparently. Cool.

The letter indicates that lawmakers want Google to keep location private so that women who live in states where abortion is or becomes illegal can kill their babies without getting caught. It’s ironic that lawmakers want to help people break the law.

Mandelburg didn't mention the obvious: Information isn't illegal and can't be stopped from crossing state lines, and it's perfectly legal for a woman to have an abortion in a state where it's legal, even if the state she's from has outlawed it. Again, Mandelburg doesn't explain the structure or cost of the state surveillance apparatus she desires that would be needed to monitor every woman of childbearing age in a state to make sure she's not thinking about having an abortion -- which would also, presumably, involve imprisoning or otherwise physically restraining a woman who wants to go to another state or is simply thinking about doing so -- nor does she point to any court ruling that would legalize such a massive state surveillance apparatus.

A July 7 post by Catherine Salgado lamented that Google would not entertain the MRC's surveillance state fantasies:

Following pressure from Democratic Party lawmakers and the liberal media, Google announced that it would make a new exception for retaining users’ location history—users visiting abortion clinics.

After the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, multiple tech companies and executives rushed to voice their support for baby killing. Google has now joined the ranks of pro-abortion businesses.

The Big Tech platform received considerable pressure from Democratic Party lawmakers, with 42 demanding that Google help those seeking illegal abortions by not collecting their location data.

14 senators and seven House lawmakers -- all Democrats -- also signed a letter to Google pressuring the company to remove crisis pregnancy clinics from abortion-related search results. Following such pressure, lo and behold, the platform announced that it will delete user location data for abortion clinic patients.

Like Mandelburg, Salgado did not explain how this anti-abortion surveillance state would work, let alone how it would be legal given that how it would fly in the face of longstanding rulings upholding the freedom to travel, or why simply searching for information should be treated as a crime. Instead, she played whataboutism:

Google didn’t appear so concerned about user data privacy in the past. Free Speech Alliance member Project Veritas presented evidence in April alleging that Google had complied with secret government court orders and gave the government detailed private data from Project Veritas employees’ Gmail accounts.

Perhaps Project Veritas shouldn't have been committing crimes if it didn't want its communications to be surveilled.

Joseph Vazquez tried a different kind of whataboutism in a July 13 post:

Leftist outlets warning about potential data privacy infringements for those seeking abortions pushed for the surrender of people’s privacy when it came to COVID-19.

MRC Free Speech America found at least eight major publications that seemed to have respective major epiphanies on the importance of data privacy. Once the news broke that the U.S. Supreme Court would — and eventually did overturn the infamous pro-abortion Roe v. Wade( 1973) decision, liberal outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times, BuzzFeed News and Fortune went into apparent shock and hypocritically warned about Big Tech’s threat to women’s abortion-related data privacy.

But these same outlets sang a different tune when it came to data privacy and contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vasquez clearly doesn't understand the difference between a medical procedure that is legal in many states and a communicable virus that is spread by close contact with people, thus making contact tracing a helpful in prevention and treatment. And, like the others, Vazquez didn't explain why a massive anti-abortion surveillance police state is needed (let alone legal) or why simply searching for information must be made a crime. Instead, he whined that one publication "sounded the Big Brother alarm for women seeking abortions" while refusing to explain why it wouldn't be.

As much as the MRC whines about "big tech," it knows it can be used to advance its policy objectives -- like an anti-abortion surveillance state.

Double standard on graphic images

The Media Research Center's Alex Christy loudly complained in a June 2 post about the idea that graphic images of the victims of gun massacres should be made public as a way to move people into doing something about them:

On Thursday’s CNN Newsroom, host Ana Cabrera and pediatric trauma surgeon Dr. Chethan Sathya claimed the country needs “an Emmett Till moment” in order to do something about “these automatic weapons.”

The Till reference comes from an op-ed in the Washington Post from former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, which Cabrera read from, “in order for change to happen, we need an Emmett Till moment. Johnson writes in part this -- and I'm quoting here – ‘I lack the moral standing to tell a parent to accept and approve for the greater good the public display of photos of his or her dead child, nor do I suggest the release of any images in particular, but something graphic is required to awaken the public to the real horror of these repeated tragedies.’”

Till was brutally membered and dismembered in a racist attack while his body was left to sink in a river. Here, Johnson and CNN are talking about punishing innocent people for someone else’s crimes.

Cabrera then introduced Sathya and declared “This is such an important discussion” and asked “What do you think about what the secretary there wrote about this idea of people seeing with their own eyes what it looks like, a gunshot wound in a child? Do people need to see what you see?”

Sathya did agree, “One hundred percent. This has been something that we’ve been seeing as physicians, trauma surgeons for decades, right? You know, we are talking right now about mass shootings. We're talking about children being killed. This is something we see on a daily basis.”

Mark Finkelstein similarly whined in a post the next day:

Pro-abortion liberals rage against laws requiring ultrasounds before women can get an abortion. But whereas liberals oppose having people see living babies, many liberals are now clamoring to force people to view dead babies and children—the victims of mass shootings.

On Thursday's Nicolle Wallace Deadline: White House show on MSNBC, substitute host John Heilemann led the charge on the issue.

[...]

Heilemann's guest, Dave Cullen, a gun-control advocate and author, heartily agreed: "I think we desperately need some new, fresh tactics and creative thinking. And, I like this!"

So, should we look for gun-control extremists to call on MSNBC, CNN, and other liberal outlets to implement their ghoulish proposal, and begin displaying the bodies of children killed in mass shootings?

Note: Heilemann isn't the first liberal TV host to promote the viewing of dead bodies to promote his cause. Back during the Iraq War, Walter Cronkite proposed showing the dead bodies of American soldiers in order to turn people against the war.

Finkelstein didn't mention that right-wingers have pushed graphic images to be displayed in public -- those of abortions, as a ploy to gain sympathy for the anti-abortion cause. Indeed, one of Finkelstein and Christy's co-workers, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, not only demanded that be done, she stuck graphic images in her April 20 post:

It’s Episode 34 of CensorTrack with TR. This week we talked about how Big Tech is hiding the truth about the biggest tragedy our world faces today — abortion.

A group of pro-life activists discovered the remains of 110 babies, five of which may have been killed illegally, according to National Review. “The Five” children were found on March 25th and were suspected to be around the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy when they died. This is a story that needs to break the news cycle. The world needs to see these images and know about the true tragedy of abortion. But apparently, Big Tech doesn’t think so.

A pro-life group called LifeNews tweeted out a picture of one of the five babies. The group told MRC in an email that they explicitly added a sensitive warning over their post to alert users that the content was sensitive in hopes of avoiding Twitter’s censorship. Unfortunately, Twitter disagreed. Twitter told LifeNews to delete the tweet, locked LifeNews out of its account and threatened a permanent ban.

Why? Because it showed the truth of abortion?

LifeNews told the MRC, “That's what makes Twitter's decision to force us to remove the tweet and potentially ban our account even more absurd, as we followed their own policies to ensure that a sensitive image was marked sensitive before posting it. We didn't just post it willy nilly with no warning like thousands of images of porn and violence are posted on Twitter every day with no action taken against those accounts.”

It's a pretty good bet that Mandelburg will never do an episode of "CensorTrack With TR" demanding that graphic photos of gun massacre victims be allowed on social media so that people can see "the truth" of gun violence. And she's never going call her fellow activists "ghouls" for obsessively trying to inject those photos into public spaces.

The 'Moloch list'

The MRC eventually started leaning into that attack. An October 2021 post by Matt Philbin touted a highly restrictive Texas anti-abortion law: 'The law has all the usual feminists, sexual revolutionaries and Moloch worshipers in a tizzy."

After the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the MRC ran with the narrative that supporting abortion, and having one, was the equivalent of making sacrifices to Moloch. A May 12 post by Matt Philbin invented what he called the "Moloch List" of businesses who would pay travel expenses for employees who have abortions:

Abortion as an employment benefit? If you work for the right companies. Whether the Dobbs decision reverses Roe v. Wade or not, the left’s meltdown over the draft decision has offered some big corporations a new way to virtue signal. They’re boasting that if employees must travel out of state to obtain legal abortions, the companies will pick up the travel costs.

So far, they’re mostly the Big Tech usual suspects, but some other industries represented on the Moloch List. The list is probably incomplete and the number of companies subsidizing infanticide will, tragically, grow.

Michael Ippolito bumped up the number to the "Moloch 20" in a June 27 post:

With the left completely melting down over Roe v. Wade, woke corporations have found a new way to virtue signal: Abortion access as a fringe benefit.

MRC Culture is keeping a running tally of companies offering to help employees from states where abortion is illegal to travel to murder their children.

Ippolito ranted in a July 25 post: "The left’s fight for abortion continues to become more desperate than they are willing to work with the billionaires they hate. Glad to see the teamwork done to feed Moloch!"

Philbin devoted an Aug. 19 post to attacking Google for covering abortions:

Yeah, it’s funny to remember the days when Google’s corporate motto was “Don’t be evil.” And yet it seems that a lot of the company’s employees don’t think it’s evil enough. They think Google should be a leader of the Moloch List – companies that lavish time and money on employees to kill their unborn children.

In the antiseptic, NARAL-approved language of The Washington Post, “Google staffers are calling on the tech giant to take greater steps to protect workers’ reproductive health, including by expanding travel benefits for medical services to contractors and halting political donations to antiabortion groups.”

Google gives money to antiabortion groups? Who knew?

Philbin also makes it clear that he thinks women who have abortion are sluts:

You know, those salt-of-the-earth laborers with the powered scooters and $14 coffee drinks? They’re organizing for the right to convenient sex. The capitalist exploiters are already shaking so much they can’t keep their monocles on.

An Aug. 23 post by Philbin lashed out at "Moloch List" member Yelp for putting accurate descriptions of crisis pregnancy centers on its website:

For the abortion-worshipping left, every live baby is a missed opportunity. For every unterminated pregnancy there’s a woman who can no longer have a big powerful career, carefree autonomy and meaningless casual sex. It’s a feminist nightmare.

So it helps to have tech companies like Yelp on their side. And make no mistake: Yelp has definitely chosen a side. It was an early entrant to the Moloch List, corporations who made a public show of offering to pick up abortion (and “gender affirming”) travel costs for employees who live in less bloodthirsty states.

Now, as reported by Axios, Yelp is putting warnings on listings for crisis pregnancy centers, lest babies slip through the abortion net.

Philbin didn't explain why accurately identifying crisis pregnancy centers as the anti-abortion activists they are is such a bad thing.

The MRC was also directly attacking women themselves as serving sacrifices to Moloch. Ippolito complained in a July 19 post about a Teen Vogue article on pro-choice men:

The next pundit was Bryan, who portrayed abortion as the savior of his family. Bryan, who forced his girlfriend to have an abortion, was happy that his mom also got an abortion because of his cool stuff. “The many opportunities that [decision] afforded us later in life, things my siblings and I probably took for granted at the time, like organic food, extracurriculars, cultural enrichment, and having our in-state tuition paid for,” he stated. Glad to see Bryan thought his sacrifice to Moloch was worth it.

Ippolito went on to suggest his manhood was being threatened by this article: "Instead of wanting strong men to raise families, Teen Vogue wants weak men to waive responsibility and encourage the murder of children."

Two days later, Ippolito lashed out at actress Jennifer Grey for having an abortion as a teenager, dismissing her as an "irrelevant Hollywood lefty" who is "coming out of the woods to give another dumb take on abortion" and sneering, "Once again, another Hollywood leftie decided to have a meltdown over the inability to sacrifice her child to Moloch."

At the MRC, if you don't agree with them, you're not just wrong, you're evil.

'Crisis pregnancy centers' exposed

The MRC is such a group of anti-abortion extremists that it gets mad when you accurately describe what anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" do. Matt Philbin whined in an Aug. 23 post:

For the abortion-worshipping left, every live baby is a missed opportunity. For every unterminated pregnancy there’s a woman who can no longer have a big powerful career, carefree autonomy and meaningless casual sex. It’s a feminist nightmare.

So it helps to have tech companies like Yelp on their side. And make no mistake: Yelp has definitely chosen a side. It was an early entrant to the Moloch List, corporations who made a public show of offering to pick up abortion (and “gender affirming”) travel costs for employees who live in less bloodthirsty states.

Now, as reported by Axios, Yelp is putting warnings on listings for crisis pregnancy centers, lest babies slip through the abortion net.

Starting today, Yelp will add a consumer notice to both faith-based and non-faith-based crisis pregnancy centers noting that they "provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”

Sure enough, if you look up such establishments on Yelp, the tag of shame is there.

As Axios explains, “Crisis pregnancy centers do not offer abortion services but promote themselves to people seeking abortions and then typically counsel the patients to go through with their pregnancies.” This, to the delicately attuned moral sensibilities of abortion enthusiasts, is unconscionable.

"Tag of shame"? We thought the MRC was proud of how CPCs deceived women and coerced them into not having an abortion (though it has lied in the past by denying that they do any such thing, despite copious evidence to the contrary). If Philbin is happy with what CPCs do, he should have no problem whatsoever with those services being accurately labeled -- after all, he made no effort to dispute the accuracy of that description.

But because Philbin lives in a hateful alternate reality, telling the truth is a threat to him:

Axios helpfully stressed that “Just noting that crisis pregnancy centers provide limited medical services doesn't address all the criticisms around such facilities.”

No, because most of the criticisms are window dressing on the pro-abortion gang’s hatred of women in crisis choosing to bring their babies to term. You have to wonder if the libertine left deep down realizes that those women who don’t kill their babies for convenience stand as a silent rebuke to the rest.

Philbin clearly doesn't believe women should have free will when it comes to the decision to carry a child to term, so he loves that CPCs deceive and coerce women -- and he would rather the world not know that inconvenient fact. So much for the notion that anyone at the MRC cares about telling the truth.