Michigan Senate Candidate Says He'll Oppose Top Abortion Provider's "War on Women"

Glenn calls for end to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood

Gary Glenn

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gary Glenn Wednesday called for an end to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood’s “war on women,” pointing to the nation’s top abortion provider’s responsibility for one out of every four abortions performed in the U.S.

“While pro-abortion ideologues such as Debbie Stabenow support forcing taxpayers to violate their conscience, I will work to end taxpayer-funding of Planned Parenthood’s 40-year old war on women,” Glenn wrote in a statement to Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards in response to a May 1st letter inviting him to answer the group’s survey of candidates for federal office.

“For all the rhetoric in the political war of words on this issue, it is Planned Parenthood that is actually responsible for taking the lives of millions of American women before they were ever allowed to draw their first breath,” Glenn wrote.

“Those millions of prenatal children dead are not the only casualties or victims of Planned Parenthood’s ongoing war on women,” Glenn wrote. “The collateral damage includes the walking wounded, the millions of women who carry the emotional and physical scars of having allowed Planned Parenthood to terminate the lives of their prenatal children.”

“It also includes tens of millions more Americans who -- thanks to hardcore abortion advocates such as Debbie Stabenow -- are forced through their tax dollars, in violation of their conscience, to pay for Planned Parenthood’s ongoing war on women,” Glenn wrote.

"I will not only work to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood's war on women," Glenn wrote, "but will also work to bring an end to the war itself, by protecting the first right -- the Right to Life -- with which every prenatal child is unalienably endowed by its Creator."

Glenn said both Stabenow and President Barack Obama have revealed “an unsettling extremism in their ideological promotion of abortion as an ultimate means of birth control.”

He pointed to Stabenow’s vote against a federal ban on late-term procedures known as “partial birth abortions” and to Obama’s vote as an Illinois state senator against legislation requiring medical personnel to give life-saving care to babies who are born alive after surviving an unsuccessful abortion attempt.

Stabenow vote: http://www.rtl.org/action_center/Stabenow_abortion.htm

Obama vote: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24481

“Debbie Stabenow takes the extreme position, overwhelmingly opposed by most Americans,” Glenn wrote, “that abortionists such as Planned Parenthood should be allowed even as late as nine months to vacuum out a fully-developed baby’s brain and collapse its skull after the rest of its body has already been fully delivered.”

“Similarly, then-state Sen. Barack Obama voted against protecting the lives even of babies that are actually born alive after surviving an abortion attempt,” Glenn wrote. “Such votes indicate extreme views on abortion that are not supported by mainstream America.”

Glenn has for twelve years been president of the American Family Association of Michigan, a pro-life and traditional family values advocacy group. He has also served on the board of directors of two other pro-life organizations, Michigan Chooses Life and Michigan Citizens for Life.

In 2006, he was a leading proponent of the Prenatal Child Protection Amendment to the state constitution, which would have simply defined a prenatal child as a person from the point of conception and thus included under constitutional protections of all persons against loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The amendment failed to gather enough signatures to appear on the state ballot. However, Glenn's campaign website indicates that if elected, he will sponsor such an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Glenn is also one of two coauthors of Michigan's Marriage Protection Amendment defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.

He is also a founding member of Michigan Freedom to Work, a group pushing for enactment of a state law prohibiting compulsory union membership or dues payment as a condition of employment; he led the successful effort to pass such a law in Idaho a quarter-century ago.

As a county commissioner in the 1990's, he authored the first Medical Savings Accounts health insurance plan for county employees in the nation and was invited to testify before Congress, after which a top Congressional staffer called Glenn a national "pioneer" in free market healthcare reform. He has pledged to repeal President Obama's socialized medicine scheme which, despite denials from the administration, includes tax-funding of abortions.

Glenn in February was endorsed by Michigan 4 a Conservative Senate, a statewide coalition of now 50 TEA Party groups that was modeled after Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate, a group that played a determining role in defeating four-term U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in Tuesday's Republican primary election.