While Mark Obenshain is continually praised on the campaign trail for his positive campaign commitment, Mark Herring is so determined to be the anti-Obenshain he’s continuing his fast descent into madness with another blatant lie against Obenshain, this time duping a family of four to appear in a television ad for it.
Herring’s ad (which isn’t worth linking to) speaks on Obenshain’s controversial bill in 2009 that would have required women suffering a miscarriage and discarding the fetus to report the accident, thanks a case of exactly that happening in Rockingham County. Obenshain’s bill was butchered in committee and the legal process in the State Senate, changing the language to force any woman suffering a miscarriage to have to report it to the police. Obenshain was very clear when the bill was filed:
Let me be clear: I do not support imposing an added burden on women who suffer a miscarriage and I will not allow any legislation that could have that effect to get out of committee. I am working with a variety of interested parties from across the political spectrum to see if it is possible to rewrite this bill so that it addresses only the narrow law enforcement objective. If this proves impossible, I will have the bill stricken.
Obenshain was true to his word; rather than have a bill that would place undue burdens on women, he struck the bill rather than allowing it to go to committee.
In order to prevent the same thing from happening again, Obenshain even reached out to both NARAL and Planned Parenthood in an attempt to find language that would better protect a mother’s health. Ultimately, they were unable to reach a compromise, and Obenshain abandoned the legislation.
Now it’s 2013, and Herring finds a couple that had trouble conceiving. His campaign pulls them aside, shows them NOT the original bill, but the modified bill, and says Mark Obenshain did this, will you talk about it on camera? They don’t show them that Obenshain pulled the bill, they don’t mention that Obenshain met with interest groups in the opposite direction to reach a compromise, they don’t mention the circumstances behind the bill.
This continues Herring’s sad track record of distorting, muddling and manipulation of Mark Obenshain’s record. While Obenshain commits to a positive campaign, rising above the fray, Mark Herring is content to revel in mudslinging, and innocent casualties be damned.
In this case, Mark Herring has exploited a well meaning family for his own ends, taking their personal struggles in conceiving children in a bastardly attempt to make it fit his attack agenda. There’s no indication that the family’s struggle to conceive would in any way meet the threshold for Obenshain’s concerns on discarding a child. In no way would a failure to conceive or struggles mean that the family would be required to report anything to anyone.
But this doesn’t matter to Mark Herring. What matters is that he continue to perpetuate the misleading idea that Obenshain is against women, and innocent men, women and children be damned. The ends justify the means, so we’ll find a couple who had trouble conceiving children, LIE to them about Mark Obenshain’s record and timeline of events, record their intimate personal struggles and then air them for all the world to see.
Shame on Mark Herring, his campaign and the Democratic Party of Virginia to allow such underhanded tactics to continue. There are numerous issues were Herring and Obenshain disagree, but that wasn’t ‘sexy’ enough for the Herring campaign, wasn’t a big enough effect. So we’ll manipulate intimate family struggles as means to an end.
Pathetic, Mark Herring. You are pathetic.
