Lila Rose: The New Darling of Anti-Choice Right-Wingers

By Bill Berkowitz, Religion Dispatches. Posted June 24, 2009.

“Rose’s strategy -- accusing Planned Parenthood of failing to report suspected statutory rapes -- is not a new one in the anti-abortion trenches,” the Times reported. “But the new-media twist on the idea has put her front and center of a new generation.”

“Efforts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood,” notes Amie Newman, managing editor of RH Reality Check, “are actually just a continuation of massive anti-choice campaigns against contraception, family planning, annual exams and pap smears, STI checks for low income women (and men!). It's stunning, really, to wage a campaign against PPFA as they are the most well known reproductive health provider.”

Indeed, Rose’s work “is an update of an old tactic invented by Mark Crutcher of the Denton, Texas-based group Life Dynamics,” adds Frederick Clarkson, a longtime researcher of the anti-choice movement.

Crutcher waged a similar campaign for several years, and while his efforts were much ballyhooed in the conservative press, little ultimately came of it... [Crutcher’s] efforts were, however, carried out over the telephone and the conversations were primarily with receptionists. Rose takes the effort farther. Video is far more compelling than recordings of phone calls.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Rose, the third of eight children, grew up in San Jose. Her father is an engineer for Sun Microsystems. She was home schooled... and also attended a part-time Christian school and a junior college throughout high school. When she was 15, she said, she founded Live Action and began giving anti-abortion presentations to schools and youth groups.

Between 2006 and 2008, Rose attended four workshops at the Leadership Institute, a Virginia-based educational foundation that teaches conservatives how to polish their communication skills. The Times continues:

In fall 2006, when she was a UCLA freshman, she and fellow conservative activist James O’Keefe came up with the idea to infiltrate clinics.

Both Rose and O’Keefe acknowledged that they were inspired by the earlier work of Crutcher. O’Keefe is the founder of The Rutgers Centurian, a conservative magazine published at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. According to a May 2005 piece in Salon, the Leadership Institute “gave O’Keefe books on starting a publication, awarded him a $500 ‘Balance in Media Grant,’ and suggested never-fail places on campus to ferret out liberal excess.”

Is it Working?

There is no question that Rose’s work is having an impact. Back in April, Tennessee lawmakers sought to end a $721,000 contract with Planned Parenthood, according to the Times, “citing outrage over what they saw in a video Rose had recently posted.” In July, she once again “posed… as a 14-year-old impregnated by a 31-year-old; a Planned Parenthood staffer says, ‘Just say you have a boyfriend, 17-years-old, whatever.’”

The Orange County Board of Supervisors also “voted to suspend a grant worth nearly $300,000 to Planned Parenthood that was earmarked for sex education, not abortions… [after] a conservative Tustin businessman raised the issue with Supervisor John Moorlach after meeting Rose and seeing her videos,” according to the Times. The grant was ultimately reinstated though the board “created a new policy that will make it more difficult for Planned Parenthood and some other community clinics to qualify for the grant in the future.”

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Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

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