RALEIGH — The Susan B. Anthony List, a national 501(c)(4) organization based in Washington, D.C., is targeting a member of North Carolina’s congressional delegation as “too extreme” on abortion, as part of a six-figure campaign. The campaign has identified a list they call the #Terrible20 for refusing to maintain the decades-long bipartisan compromise, known as the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding to directly fund abortions, and Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat who represents North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District, has made the list.
The national campaign will target each of these 20 members of Congress with ads and even rallies at their congressional and district offices.
For the campaign against Ross, they kicked things off outside of her Raleigh district office with an event on Aug. 17. Marilyn Musgrave, the SBA List vice president of government affairs; along with N.C. House Rep Erin Pare, and Tommy Valentine, the national field director at Catholic Vote, headlined the event.
“Ross is one of the #Terrible20 legislators who refuses to support the popular, bipartisan Hyde Amendment and similar policy riders that, for decades, have stopped taxpayer funding of abortion and saved millions of unborn American lives,” SBA List said in a statement.
The group said this is an expansion of their continuing campaign to “expose abortion extremism” and that they would be traveling to Georgia and Arizona next for rallies against others on the #Terrible20 list.
“Most Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion on demand, yet Deborah Ross has no problem ignoring her North Carolina constituents to vote in lock-step with the abortion industry,” said Mallory Quigley, SBA List vice president of communications and Women Speak Out national spokeswoman. “If she insists on forcing taxpayers to fund abortion on demand and support barbaric, late abortions without limits, she must and will face the consequences of her extremism at the ballot box.”
The SBA List statement said the campaign began Aug. 23 “with a digital ad and grassroots phone call campaign.”
The campaign’s ad says that Ross and other Washington Democrats “have an extreme abortion agenda” and that they “support painful late-term abortions up to the moment of birth, even at nine months.”
The Hyde Amendment, named after a long-term Illinois Republican Congressman, named Henry Hyde, has long been seen as an untouchable compromise in a country deeply divided on the issue of abortion. The current state of that compromise was brought into question; however, when President Joe Biden changed his position and numerous other Democrats said they would fight to overturn it.
“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment,” Biden said at an Atlanta fundraiser during his campaign, announcing his change in position.
