If Republicans Think Abortion Is So Bad, Why Can't They Say One True Thing About It?

Your weekly repro rights roundup.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

As much as every Republican on the GOP debate stage swore up and down that they were “unapologetically” anti-abortion, one thing they practically all had in common was an insistence upon lying about abortion. I could be generous and say they were all merely mistaken about abortion, but at this point, the arguments they made have all been fact checked enough times that a cursory Google search will easily show that they are wrong. Are we seriously supposed to believe that people running for President and those working for them have never gotten around to Googling a big splashy point they are so excited to make? Well, possibly — but surely, not bothering to do that is some kind of malpractice.

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Nearly all of the candidates bravely came out in opposition to “abortion on demand up until the moment of birth.”

“What the Democrats are trying to do on this issue is wrong, to allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth” — Ron DeSantis

“We cannot let states like California, New York and Illinois have abortions on demand up until the day of birth. That is immoral. It is unethical. It is wrong.” — Tim Scott.

Well, then they should be delighted to know that this is not a real thing that exists anywhere or happens anywhere with regard to normal, healthy pregnancies. The reason some states do not have specific time tables is because when there is a serious maternal or fetal complication later in pregnancy, we need doctors and patients to be able to make those decisions at gametime without worrying about going to prison — just as with any other emergency procedure.

You can’t just walk into an abortion clinic or hospital at nine months pregnant and say “Hey, you know what? Changed my mind, let’s abort this sucker” anymore than you can walk into a hospital and ask for an unnecessary open heart surgery. Doctors are not just going to give you any random surgery you want, for funsies.

Republicans don’t mention the part about maternal or fetal complications because they know anyone in their right mind would agree that abortion should be an option in those situations. Pretending not to understand this is why Texas is being sued for forcing women to give birth to babies with no brain and no chance of survival and why a woman in Florida had to carry a baby for 13 weeks after she found out it had no kidneys and no chance of survival.

Another big lie came from Mike Pence, who claimed that he wanted a federal 15 week abortion ban because fetuses shouldn’t be aborted when they feel pain.

"Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation thats says when a baby is capable of feeling pain, an abortion cannot be allowed?” Pence asked. “A 15-week ban is an idea whose time has come. It's supported by 70 percent of the American people, but it’s going to take unapologetic leadership.”

That statistic came from a survey sponsored by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America that incorrectly told people that a fetus can feel pain at 15 weeks, which it cannot. It is not possible for it to feel pain because the brain has not developed enough by that time to register pain.

"The best available evidence indicates that it's not possible for a fetus at 20 or 22 weeks to feel pain. The neurofibrils that connect pain receptors to the cerebral cortex are not developed, and really don't develop until the third trimester — past 26 weeks," Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California at San Francisco, told Refinery29 in 2018.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists agrees.

“The science conclusively establishes that a human fetus does not have the capacity to experience pain until after at least 24–25 weeks,” reads a fact sheet on the organization’s website. “Every major medical organization that has examined this issue and peer-reviewed studies on the matter have consistently reached the conclusion that abortion before this point does not result in the perception of pain in a fetus.”

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The most absurd lie of the evening, however, came from Ron DeSantis, who told an objectively ridiculous story about woman who was born alive during an abortion and discarded in a pan.

“I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan,” DeSantis explained. “Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to a different hospital.”

DeSantis is referring to a real person here — Miriam "Penny" Hopper. Her story, however, is absolute nonsense. Her story, which changes quite regularly, is that her mother went to the hospital after experiencing bleeding at 23 weeks pregnant — sometimes, she claims, after an attempted botched at-home abortion. The doctor said they needed to induce labor and she was born at 1.11 lbs at 23 weeks and “discarded in a bedpan.” Her grandmother supposedly found her the next day, whereupon she was transported to a hospital and saved, after which she lived a glorious and fruitful life.

This would all be very heartwarming were it even remotely possible for a baby born at 23 weeks in 1955 to survive a whole day in a bedpan with no medical assistance and no ventilator, which it definitely was not. It’s barely possible today, with all of the medical assistance in the world.

In other news, I am definitely going to have to bust out my ukulele because “My Bedpan Baby” really just writes itself, no?

I don’t doubt that many Republicans really do believe that abortion is bad and wrong — but the fact that they have to embellish as much as they do, the fact that not one of their major talking points about abortion is remotely based in reality, demonstrates their lack of confidence in convincing others that it is bad and wrong. They know that if they talk about the reality of abortion, people just aren’t going to be as shocked and appalled as they need them to be in order to get them to come out and vote for their grotesque policies.

If something is really and truly bad, accuracy is not a threat.

That Was A Lot, But Let’s Have Some Quickies, Shall We?

A judge has ruled that West Virginia can restrict abortion pills even though the FDA says they are safe. [ABC News]

GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel thinks it’s a great idea for Republican candidates to keep talking about abortion. [New York Times]

In Texas, a fetus is a person, except in cases involving malpractice, in which case it magically goes back to being just a fetus. [Slate]

In Louisiana, 50 percent of residents would sure like to have their abortion rights back, while 42 percent are very happy with it being criminalized and banned entirely. [WWL-TV]

South Carolina’s Supreme Court has upheld their horrifying 6-week abortion ban, which really puts a dark spin on that one James Taylor song.  [CNN]