Last year, the thing that advocates and people who can get pregnant have been dreading for decades finally happened: Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in the decision for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. The fallout between the leaked draft of the opinion and now has been a slow-moving horror movie for countless Americans who relied on Roe as law of the land and as a protection for accessing the healthcare they need when they need it.
Now there are four states with constitutional amendments that do not protect the right to abortion (or allow public funds to be used for abortion-related healthcare) and just 17 states have laws protecting the right to abortion, three states have protections in their constitutions, and just four states (plus DC) have “codified the right to abortion throughout pregnancy without state interference,” according to the Guttmacher Institute. 24 states have near-total abortion bans or are anticipated to pass such bans in upcoming legislative sessions. A third of American pregnant people are forced to travel more than an hour to access the healthcare that should be their right. It’s rough out here.
And that brings us to this January, 22, 2023 — a day that should have been the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that changed so many women, birthing people and family’s lives by giving them the legal right to make reproductive healthcare choices for themselves. We didn’t get here by accident and there was a calculated movement to see these protections stripped away — and underneath it all, like in the case of so many injustices, there’s a whole lot of ignorance (with a dash of racism, misogyny and cruelty) to acknowledge.
Unfortunately, there are far too many anti-choice politicians who have spent the bulk of their careers being both loud and wrong about reproductive healthcare — spouting some of the strangest, most absurd and anti-science nonsense imaginable (on the record!). And that loud and wrong energy has ultimately cost women and birthing people their lives, their safety and their right to make their own reproductive health choices.
To acknowledge what’s a pretty terrible and sad would-be anniversary and to recharge your energy to push for an expansion of reproductive rights and protections where you live, please check out this nightmarish list of deeply ignorant, uninformed and dangerous things actual grown-ass politicians have said about reproductive rights.
Clayton Williams
When speaking about sexual assault, Clayton Williams (who tried to run for Governor of Texas) said offhand in a 1990 rally, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
We don’t even need to dignify that with facts to prove how wrong that statement is.
Jon Kyl
Former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl once said that abortions make up “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” Proving he has no idea what this organization he rallied against even does.
Okay, so, no, they don’t. Now, abortion is quite common, with one in every four women receiving one in their lifetime. However, percentage-wise, Planned Parenthood’s abortion services only make up a small percentage of the various services (from cancer screenings to birth control) they provide. Even if it was at that 90 percent figure though, it truly wouldn’t matter because abortion is just healthcare.
Joe Walsh
During a broadcasted debate on Chicago’s WTTW, former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh talked about his pro-life stance, saying, “Understand though, that when we talk about exceptions, we talk about rape, incest, health of a woman, life of a woman. Life of the woman is not an exception.”
At the time, he couldn’t elaborate on that, until after when he was talking to the press, and then, he decided for some reason that it was a good time to double down on what he said. He even said that women no longer face life-threatening occurrences when pregnant, saying, “Absolutely. With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance.”
Well, Walsh, according to Medline, ectopic pregnancies “occurs in 1 in every 40 to 1 in every 100 pregnancies,” along with that, approximately two women die during childbirth every day, or 700 each year. And complications are even higher for people of color.
The CDC reported that women of color experience maternal mortality up to three times higher than white women, with the statistics showing 43 affected per 100,000 live births.
Literally say less.
Ben Carson
The former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson once said at the Values Voter Summit in 2013 that women were the ones that needed to be re-educated on their role in giving birth. He said, “There are those of us in this society who have told women that there’s a war on them because that cute little baby inside of them. There is no war on them, the war is on their babies. … What we need to do is reeducate the women to understand that they are the defenders of these babies.”
There’s so much wrong with that statement. Instead of “reeducating” people to accept being considered a vessel for a pregnancy, let’s reeducate our anti-choice population to mind their business.
Trent Franks
Former Arizona Representative Trent Franks made a bold (and factually untrue) statement saying, “The incidence of pregnancy resulting from rape are very low” during a House Judiciary hearing in 2013.
It seems Franks doesn’t have Google, because you can easily find that an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. And it’s really just a good idea that if you’re a white dude politician about to say something dissmissive about sexual assault, you should instead not.
Todd Akin
Get ready for this one, because former Missouri representative Todd Akin once said in 2012, “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Not only is this as misogynistic and anti-abortion as it gets, but it’s also so factually incorrect that it hurts. The thing he’s referring to was, seemingly, a part of duck anatomy where some duck vaginas are able to send unwanted sperm elsewhere in their “labyrinthine vaginas” instead of allowing them to access their eggs. I hate knowing this too.
The female body doesn’t shut down anything, but assault victims and survivors do, unfortunately, get diseases, experience immense emotional and physical trauma and become pregnant from rape.
Allen West
Under the veneer of “pro-life” branding, the anti-choice politicians are all quietly urging for a return to a society where the subjugation of women and birthing people was a standard and accepted practice without any pushback. Unfortunately, in the case of Rep. Allen West of Florida, he said the quiet part loud:
“[T]hese Planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness — to let them know what we are not going to have our men become subservient.”
And we don’t kink shame here, but loudly yelling about being “neutered” by women who just want to decide if they are going to be pregnant or not feels like something none of us consented to be a part of.
Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz is a known dildo-hating goon with a track record for supporting anti-choice nonsense at every turn. And like so many others on this list, he’s found his way into straight-up rape apologism too.
“When it comes to rape, rape is a horrific crime against the humanity of a person, and needs to be punished and punished severely … But at the same time, as horrible as that crime is, I don’t believe it’s the child’s fault. And we weep at the crime, we want to do everything we can to prevent the crime on the front end, and to punish the criminal, but I don’t believe it makes sense to blame the child.”
Again, there’s a really good chance that if you are blessed to never ever be in the position of having to navigate a pregnancy due to sexual assault, you should keep your mouth shut about other people’s choices.
Jeb Bush
I didn’t go to number school and I’m hardly an accountant, but I can recognize that women and people with vulvas make up a sizeable amount of the population. In the US, as of July 1, 2021, there were 164.38 million males and 167.51 million females, per Statista. And that doesn’t include the breakdown of people who don’t identify as female or male or don’t match up with cisgender norms.
So to be a person running for president (circa 2016, remember that? The Jeb! of it all) and say that you’re not sure why funding should be allocated toward women’s health feels, uh, bad. The U.S. in particular faces a
— and a lack of resources and committment from leadership to improve conditions is a dangerous part of its root causes.
“I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
Richard Mourdock
It just feels really gross to have to navigate folks who namecheck God as a justification for their inhumane policies. And, unfortunately, in the case of GOP senate candidate Richard Mourdock, he also used religion for a bit of that rape apologism. Again. (Anyone sensing a theme here?)
“Life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
Lawrence Lockman
A lot of politicians are just overgrown speech and debate kids who love to suggest insane hypotheticals paired with nonsense fallacies to make their “points.” Main State Rep. Lawrence Lockman, for example, argued that pregnant people making a reproductive healthcare decision with their doctor is on par with allowing rapists to legally rape people?
“If a woman has [the right to an abortion], why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t [usually] result in anyone’s death.”
Again, the quiet part (“I don’t care about the safety and well-being of women”) is said extremely loud.
Michael Burgess
There’s a lot of really weird pseudoscience in anti-choice land that implies that fetuses that are non-viable outside of the womb have more going on than they really do. That’s not to say that a fetus isn’t doing some interesting biological stuff in there, but it’s more in the microscopic realm of sprouting more cells. And they certainly aren’t getting up to what Texas Representative Michael Burgess claimed in June 2023:
“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?””
A lot to unpack here like: Why are the male fetuses the only one who get to masturbate? Feels unfair. But also this is decidedly medically inaccurate. Science shows at 15 weeks that there is movement but absolutely no evidence supports the idea that there’s masturbating happening (or a pleasure/pain sensation).
“We certainly can see a movement of a fetus during that time, but in terms of any knowledge about pleasure or pain – there are no data to assess,” Jeanne Conry, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told US News World & Report. “We don’t know enough about the biology and the science.”
That article also adds that the fetal masturbation claims are traced back to “a single letter written by two OB/GYNs in Italy in 1996 and published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The letter related an anecdote in which the two doctors had ‘recently observed a female fetus at 32 weeks gestation touching the vulva with the fingers of the right hand” before the female fetus experienced prolonged spasms, and “finally…relaxed and rested.'”
Even though the whole thing is bunk I just think it’s really, really weird my guy had to fanfiction in the idea that it had to be a male fetus jerking off too. Your extreme sexism’s making you messy.
Rick Santorum
Centering Christianity in a country that has a lot of people who don’t follow that religion is the root of a lot of issues in this space. And often the goal is to control other people’s sexual behavior in accordance to those teachings — which goes against the whole individual liberty thing we’re supposed to have going on. Santorum showed his whole ass on this front when he started to turn his creepy little eyes toward attacking access to contraceptives:
“One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’ It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Like, who the hell are you to tell anyone “how things are supposed to be” sexually or otherwise? And beyond that if people can’t have birth control and they can’t have abortions, forced pregnancy and forced celibacy are the only miserable options.
Steve Stockman
“If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.”
Yeehaw? Like, are we saying the fetus would hold their host at gunpoint for nine months? At what stage of development do they gain access to the firearm? I assume there’s no background checks involved?
Mike Huckabee
Governor turned TV talking head who ruined your relationship with your dad Mike Huckabee once said “Planned Parenthood isn’t purely a ‘healthcare provider’ any more than a heroin dealer is a community pharmacist.”
Given the opioid epidemic and the maternal mortality crisis and the lack of access to affordable healthcare (that Planned Parenthood can often assist folks with), just make it make sense why this is acceptable to say.
Paul Ryan
A king of nonsense word salad, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said of sexual assault-induced pregnancies that “the method of conception doesn’t change the idea of life.”
This is a statement that is a sentence with words in it — but when it comes to the nuances of being a whole-ass human with value of your own and deciding whether a pregnancy born of trauma is one that you intend to continue with, it truly means nothing.
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