Some of us who live in the Central Phoenix area recently received a direct mail piece that even made our jaded political souls chuckle. With that in mind we decided to publish our very own truth watch….
While we have often been frustrated with the “Pollyannaish” nature of the Republic's truth watch, their mission of “Keeping Arizona Honest” is a valiant one.
It is in that spirit that we have decided to fact check the Center for Arizona Policy for their latest statement in support of Shawnna Bolick running for the Arizona House in LD 28.
Â
While the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) has a fine tradition of valiantly protecting “preborn children,” the imagery associated with the quote is not that of a child in a mother's womb. No, that is a child most definitely post birth — and a really cute one at that!
In the mailer, Cathi Herrod, President of Center for Arizona Policy, says, “we need leaders who will stand up for the most vulnerable in our society.”
So is a child in a mother's womb part of our society? There may be some room for debate here, like the last 40 years or so, but from Mrs. Herrod's point of view that preborn child is definitely part of her business, err… society.
So, the quote is paired with a picture of a baby — not a preborn child, if they had the picture of a child in a mother's womb, the HighGround truth watch would have had not trouble with that. The quote and the picture however, do not match. That's a one star reduction.
Now, to be clear, babies outside the mother's womb are still some of our most vulnerable members of “society.” Particularly vulnerable are children born to families who mostly do not live in Ms. Bolick's Legislative District 28 — Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, Arcadia — or are dues paying members of the Center for Arizona Policy.
When it comes to CAP however, if you are in the womb, you are truly blessed with their favor and support. However, once you are born — particularly if you are from a low income demographic or don't happen to attend the right church — you are most definitely on your own.
One only needs to look back to Medicaid Restoration to see how much CAP really cares about the “most vulnerable.” During the debate, Center for Arizona Policy did not support restoration. When Governor Brewer, the most pro-life governor ever in the history of Arizona, claimed that being “pro-life&rdquo meant taking care of all of the most vulnerable in our society, CAP balked.
Additionally, in an even more ironic twist of fate, CAP also ignored the “will of the voters” argument for restoration (Prop. 204 in 2000), only to roll it out when it more suited their ideological leanings during the recent court decisions about gay marriage.
At the end of the day, CAP was more than willing to allow 63,000 Arizonans, including 5,000 cancer patients in the middle of treatment, to be removed from AHCCCS when the federal authority was set to expire. They were also willing to cut off healthcare for over 10,000 of our veterans who had returned from war and were not yet receiving their VA benefits. We would argue, along with Governor Brewer, that these Arizonan's certainly were some of the “most vulnerable members of our society.”
So in addition to a one star reduction misleading imagery, we must also unfortunately take another two stars away for the hypocrisy of saying that CAP supports policies which protect the “most vulnerable members of our society.”
If we knew the income demographic or the political affiliation of the parents of the baby featured in the ad, there is a chance that this statement could end up with Zero stars. However, with the information we have at this time, we have no choice but to give Center for Arizona Policy's statement ONE STAR.
They do care deeply for preborn children.