Ann Marie Buerkle: This Leopard isn't Changing

That Was Then:

Thursday, July 6, 1989

FYI, those of you for whom Buerkle is a relatively new phenom, it was on this same day, July 6, 1989, that she and her cohorts demonstrated their respect for life, and their compassion for women and health care providers, by bringing to Planned Parenthood an illegally procured, blackened foetus in a jar. During this time she was the local spokesperson for Operation Rescue and associated with extremist Randall Terry; a decade earlier she had started the local chapter of Friends for Life.

Then, this in March 2010: 

Buerkle minimizes her anti-abortion history. [Syracuse.com printed the following summary on January 23, 2011: 

       When she launched her run for Congress in [March of] 2010, Buerkle said abortion was not the issue that would define her, nor would it be a priority of her campaign....

        “I want to be really careful not to make this a referendum on abortion,” Buerkle said as she began her campaign in March 2010. “People here are concerned about jobs and the economy. I have six kids, and five of them live outside of the state because of a lack of opportunities.”

       At the time, Buerkle said her days as an anti-abortion activist were from a different part of her life, when she was a young mother and working as a nurse. “Life is an evolution,” she said in March. “You never stay in the same place."]

But then, this on July 17:

Susan B. Anthony List endorses Buerkle

This Is Now:

January 19 delivers a "passionate" speech in Congress advocating restricting and criminalizing abortion (organized by the Pro-Life Caucus)

January 20 co-sponsors "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act", H.R. 3, which extends its reach to insurance providers and another bill that would ban abortion coverage in future Federal health care provisions

January 22 walks with and addresses a March for Life gathering in Syracuse

January 24 addresses March for Life in Washington DC

February 18 votes for Pense Amendment to defund Planned Parenthood and to all stop most federal funds for women's reproductive health

February 28 Buerkle is a subject of Susan B. Anthony List's expensive ad campaign, thanking her for her vote to defund Planned Parenthood

March 2 she distances herself from the Susan B. Anthony List ad campaign, citing rules about consorting with special interest groups [Ann Marie, Really?]

March 9 she is publicly thanked for her vote to defund Planned Parenthood by Lila Rose, head of Live Action, who shows up in her big bus at the Federal Building in Syracuse [Rose is the "pro-life" advocate who deceptively and dishonestly uses altered and spliced tapes to damage Planned Parenthood]  Susan B. Anthony List helped produce this tragic piece of theatre.

Extremist Anti-Woman Buerkle Links Up With Lila Rose and Live Action's Hoax

With great thanks to Right Wing Watch:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/ann-marie-buerkle

Republican Congressmen Embrace Lila Rose and Live Action’s Hoax Videos

Submitted by Brian on February 9, 2011 

Live Action’s ongoing smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, where actors playing a pimp and a prostitute used hidden cameras to try to dupe clinic staffers into a sex trafficking ring, has ran into numerous hurdles. The radical group’s videos have found to be heavily doctored and actually show clinic workers acting properly and lawfully. In fact, before Live Action even released the edited tapes, Planned Parenthood alerted the FBI about visitors who sought advice for “underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring.” Live Action is led by anti-choice radical Lila Rose, who previously collaborated with notorious trickster James O’Keefe and likes to compare herself to Martin Luther King Jr. Rose also has a long history of deceptively editing videos.

But the Religious Right and leading Republicans have increasingly embraced Rose and her hoax videos, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is using the discredited videos to promote his bill that would end federal funding of Planned Parenthood, imperiling women’s health services.

Tomorrow, leading GOP congressmen plan to join Rose and Pence to demand Congress strip Planned Parenthood of its funding. Congressmen Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Virginia Foxx (R-NC) , Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) , Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), and Andy Harris (R-MD) will speak with Rose and Pence, along with Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony List and Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America.

All of the Congressmen mentioned have a long history with extreme anti-choice activism:

Schmidt railed against reproductive rights in a speech to 1st graders in an elementary school; Buerkleserved as the spokesperson for the extreme group Operation Rescue; Hartzler backed bills that would compel women seeking an abortion to view their sonograms and even supported legislation that would force the state to file murder charges against women and their doctors if they performed a late-term abortion; Foxx wants to ban emergency contraception like RU-486 and Ella; Harris wanted to allow pharmacists to refuse contraception to customers and challenged a moderate pro-choice Republican incumbent in 2008, and Ellmers is an avowed opponent of legal abortion who recently justified receiving taxpayer-subsidized health care by claiming that Washington DC is too expensive to live in with a $174,000 per year salary, while pushing to defund health services for low-income women.

But having such an extreme group of anti-choice congressmen standing with Rose is no surprise, as Rose herself has called for abortions to “be done in the public square.”