During the debate Scott Walker, one of the leading Republican candidates, had an exchange with Megyn Kelly which didn't get much coverage in an MSM fixated on the Trump tsunami. It should have. Here's the exchange (found via Fair and Unbalanced):
KELLY: Governor Walker, you’ve consistently said that you want to make abortion illegal even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. You recently signed an abortion law in Wisconsin that does have an exception for the mother’s life, but you’re on the record as having objected to it. Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion, and with 83 percent of the American public in favor of a life exception, are you too out of the mainstream on this issue to win the general election?
WALKER: Well, I’m pro-life, I’ve always been pro-life, and I’ve got a position that I think is consistent with many Americans out there in that.....I believe that that is an unborn child that’s in need of protection out there, and I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected, and there are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven.
This is an astonishingly radical position. Most anti-abortion politicians at least accept exceptions to a ban in cases where the pregnant woman's life is at risk. Walker evidently rejects even that. And the suggestion that the issue never really arises in those terms shows Akinesque ignorance of biological reality. As with Akin, Walker's statement ought to be a disqualifying one, especially being made in front of an audience of 24 million.
Another leading candidate, Marco Rubio, also recently expressed a radical anti-abortion stance, suggesting that he only accepts a rape exception as a tactic to make a ban easier to pass, implying that the ultimate goal is to phase out such exceptions.
The Republicans' position, if enacted into law, would radically change the nature of American society and the status and freedom of women within it. Hillary Clinton, for one, is calling attention to this:
They brag about slashing women’s health-care funding. They say they would force women who’ve been raped to carry their rapist’s child. You don’t hear any of them supporting raising the minimum wage, paid leave for new parents, access to quality child care, equal pay for women or anything that will help to give women a chance to get ahead.....[Trump's] language may be more colorful and more offensive, but the thinking, the attitude toward women is very much the same.
She's been going after Rubio in particular, but the point is, Trump differs from the rest of the Republican field more on style than on substance. John Kasich did get some kudos for expressing more tolerant views on gays, but a deeper look shows that his views aren't really all that progressive -- and even what Kasich did say was enough to make conservative commenters on some sites write him off as someone they could never support.
This is a radical party that wants to drag the country into some weird Handmaid's Tale nightmare where religious taboo obliterates personal freedom. That would be just as true even if Trump wasn't in the race. It might even be more noticeable. We can't afford to forget it.
So these TGOP politicians are against exceptions even to save the life of the mother? Or as happened in Ireland to a non-Catholic Hindu woman, they have no problem with letting the woman die because of a religious law that makes no exceptions for people who are not adherents of that religion?
ReplyDeleteThe GOP candidates are clearly pandering to the basest of the base. I would ask them if it were their wife whose life was threatened by a 17-week fetus that was NOT going to survive, would they choose death for both of them as the Catholic hospital in Ireland did?
It is barbaric. Their extreme pro-life statements would change quite rapidly should this sort of tragedy happen in their family.
I read about the Halappanavar case. What a nightmare. I hope it was part of what helped discredit the Catholic Church in Ireland so that gay marriage, and other reforms hopefully to include abortion rights eventually, could pass there.
ReplyDeleteOf course they want to force everybody to live by their taboo system, despite its flimsy basis. Religious "morality" boils down to saying "you can't do that because my imaginary friend doesn't like it". Hardly a compelling argument.