There are only two instances in which Republicans ever seem to care about anything. One, when it is something that directly affects them personally. Two, when they have invented their own thing to get mad at that no one actually believes or is trying to do.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) managed to hit both of those marks this morning during an appearance on Meet The Press, in which she explained to Chuck Todd that when she opposed abortion rights, she didn't mean for the U.S. to turn into The Handmaid's Tale , which is the direction she now sees it going in, thanks to her own party.
As much as we would all love for this to be a wonderful story of redemption and a wrong person coming to understand why they are wrong, this was not that. Rather, Mace came out saying that the real problem are the extremists on both sides, referring the actual fact that her party very much wants 10-year-old rape victims to be forced to give birth to their rapist's babies against their will, and the completely absurd and made-up belief that there are "extremists" on the Left who basically want to be able to stab a baby in its head as it comes down the birth canal. For funsies.
“Some want to allow ending a life the day before birth — others want to ban 10yo rape victims from emergency contraception. Extremes on both sides are not the solution Americans want.”
— Nancy Mace (@Nancy Mace) 1659885150
Upon being asked by television presenter Chuck Todd what she thought of the fact that when Kansas, a very red, notoriously anti-abortion state, Mace said that she thought that what people were objecting to were the "extremities on both sides"
On the far left, you have folks who want abortion for any reason up until birth and then on the far right we have states that are trying to ensure that no abortion for any reason including rape and incest victims and girls, and that’s not okay with the electorate either.
And I see it in my own district in my own state, the vast majority of people here are okay with some guardrails but they don’t want the extremities of either side and they’re seeing states push forward with legislation like in my state of South Carolina there’s legislation that would ban the word abortion on a website or a website server, there are folks that want to ban women from traveling out of state, there are folks like in my state that want to ban abortion for women who are victims of rape and girls who are victims of incest. And that’s just, both sides have these extremities where the vast majority of people just are not there right now.
Chuck Todd did not, for the record, correct her claim that "the far left" wants abortion for any reason up until birth. He just let it lie there. He also did not mention that it's not "the far right" that wants to do all of these things, it is the mainstream right. (Though to be fair, in any other country they would be the far right)
He did ask her whether she still thinks it was a great idea to overturn Roe and she confirmed that she does indeed.
To be clear, when we talk about post-viability abortions, what we are talking about is inducing labor early either to save the life of the mother or because a fatal fetal abnormality, in order to spare parents the trauma of giving birth to a dead baby or one that would die as soon as it took its first breath. Perhaps ironically, in the days after Roe was overturned, many anti-choicers screamed from the high heavens that they did not personally consider this abortion (it is technically abortion) and that this would not be made illegal by any of their bans (it would).
Republicans are twisting this, and the fact that we do not think doctors should have to first consult with the government in order to act in an emergency, into "They want abortions up until the moment of birth!" because our actual positions, unlike theirs, are based in logic, reason and science. Real science, not made up "There's a heartbeat at six weeks gestation The abortion pill is reversible!" science.
For the record, Mace voted for a six week "Heartbeat Bill" abortion ban as a state lawmaker.
Mace, a rape survivor, also noted that some of the new laws being proposed — like requiring rape victims to report their rapes to the police in order to have an abortion — would have been traumatic for her when she was a 16-year-old who had just been raped.
"I think you can look at gestational limits that are reasonable for most Americans," she said. "One of my concerns is you've got states that are going to try to ban women from traveling, that if you're raped that you've got to report it to the police. Well, I was raped when I was 16. And it took me a week to tell my mother. By that time, any evidence would have been gone."
"And the violation of a woman's privacy, I can't tell you how traumatic that event was," the lawmaker recalled. "In my own home state, they want women to be required and mandated to report when they are raped and I just can't even imagine a world where you're a girl, a teenage girl who has been raped to have to report those things."
She added: "Handmaid's Tale was not supposed to be a roadmap, right? This is a place where we can be in the center, we can protect life."
Well, Margaret Atwood did not intend for The Handmaid's Tale to be a roadmap, but conservatives have been absolutely clear for many years now that they are bound towards Gilead. They haven't made a secret out of it the way Mace seems to believe that we on the Left have hidden our secret desires to go through nine freaking months of pregnancy only to have an abortion the day before we give birth for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps if she actually listened to some of her compatriots instead of sitting around and imagining wacky things to claim the Left believes, she would know that.
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“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…”
What?? Dont you get??