Billion-Dollar Foundation Targets Pro-Life Groups
By: Austin Ruse, originally published July 25, 2024, C-Fam
WASHINGTON D.C., July 26 (C-Fam) A significant step in official silencing of opposing political and scientific speech is applying the label of misinformation. The billion-dollar non-profit, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), has just launched a project to label certain speech as misinformation, and they have specifically targeted two well-known pro-life groups, Heartbeat International and Live Action.
KFF’s Health Misinformation Monitor issued its first edition in recent days and is claiming that Heartbeat International is misinforming the public when the group says the abortion pill is reversible.
Heartbeat International, along with 11 pregnancy care centers, are being sued by leftwing Democrat Attorneys General in New York and California for these claims. At issue is whether the promised effects of the regime may be avoided in some cases.
The regime includes taking two pills: mifepristone, which inhibits the growth of the fertilized ovum, and misoprostol, which expels the ovum from the uterus. Heartbeat argues that in between taking both pills, a woman can change her mind, and the effects of the first pill can be reversed. New York Attorney General Letitia James, well known for prosecuting conservative individual and groups, says this is a false claim, consumer fraud.
Lila Rose’s group Live Action is also cited in the new misinformation project of the KFF. Live Action produced a remarkable video of a child growing in utero, and the voice-over explains the development, including the moments of life and the beginning of the heartbeat. The video is being shown in schools around the country. KFF claims the video is misinformation.
KFF joins a global campaign to silence speech they disagree with by labeling such speech as misinformation.
The legal template for this occurred in 2012 when the state of New Jersey sued Arthur Goldberg for making what they called false advertising claims that homosexual behavior can be changed. It was a unique use of laws against consumer fraud.
Goldberg ran a referral group for orthodox Jewish men who wanted to leave the homosexual lifestyle. Using attorneys from the anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center, New Jersey sued Goldberg for consumer fraud. At any one time during the weeks-long trial, Goldberg faced upwards of a dozen lawyers from the leftwing group. Goldberg lost the case and has been on the hook for millions in fines. He was essentially put out of business.
There is little doubt this is what Letitia James, and the California Attorney General want for Heartbeat International, but most especially for the pregnancy care groups on the ground that treat women who have taken only the first abortion pill and want the process to stop. Attorneys General in leftwing states have long targeted pregnancy care centers, often under the aegis of consumer fraud.
The larger issue is the effort of a now-global campaign to target and silence views opposed to those of the political left. At the UN, there are efforts to silence what they call “anti-rights” groups. And there is a growing coalition of governments and corporations to silence critics on the right. This campaign was played out most dramatically in the past months over the debate centered on COVID-19 and medical responses to it.
It should be noted that KFF’s new misinformation newsletter is centered on health and medical issues. KFF has financial reserves of close to a billion dollars. It was founded in San Francisco in 1948 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. It is now independent and includes such abortion luminaries on its board as Katherine Sibelius, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, and television personality Soledad O’Brien.
Austin Ruse is a writer and the president of C-FAM – Center For Family & Human Rights