Bless Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s heart. It’s hard to keep track of when you’re supposed to pretend to be a real Democrat, we guess.
He was at the Iowa State Fair — you know, where the people who are legit running for president go — and NBC News’s Ali Vitali asked him a simple question about abortion. You want to ban it, after 15 weeks or maybe 21? Yes. Wait no. Hold on, this is a ginormously confusing question, can you ask him an easier one like “If your baby was a door-to-door vaccine salesman, would you abort it?”
The exchange was very straightforward, and Vitali gave Kennedy multiple opportunities to give a coherent answer that reflected his understanding of the question asked of him. So it’s weird, then, that hours later, the Kennedy campaign (which is a totally real thing) released a statement saying oh, the candidate was just very confused and does not support any abortion bans.
Vitali asked Kennedy if he would “sign a federal protection to protect the rights that were in the Roe precedent if you were president.” Kennedy offered up that “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life.”
At which point Wonkette will just stop right here and ask how many bullshit anti-abortion talking points this brain-addled clown can cram into one sentence. It’s like he mixed in some right-wing Christian hate group talking points with his Kremlin propaganda that day. (To be fair, those are essentially the same talking points.)
“Abort a child.” Like the fetus is in there practicing its times tables at three months gestation. Or “first three months of life,” as Mr. Science referred to it.
Vitali tweeted out the transcript, you can see how clear the back-and-forth was.
“You would cap it at 15 weeks?” “Yes,” he said. “Or 21 weeks?” Vitali asked. “Yes, three months,” he said, not necessarily demonstrating any kind of stable relationship with the field of mathematics, but being pretty clear he would permit a ban of some sort. Vitali clarified one more time, he’s saying he would permit a ban on abortion. “Yes. I would.”
“You know, once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting that child.” Child, child, child, he kept saying, like Amy Coney Barrett had installed a cattle prod in his bottom and he sure as heck wasn’t going to accidentally say “fetus” again, please don’t shock him no more.
Let’s look at that freaked out clarification issued by the real and not just an elaborate troll Kennedy campaign. Note that it isn’t actually a quote from the candidate himself.
“Today, Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by a NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair. Mr. Kennedy’s position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose. He does not support legislation banning abortion.” Uh huh. It was just so noisy in there.
You can watch the Iowa State Fair video yourself here and do your own research into whether the Iowa State Fair was too noisy for Kennedy to hear the questions, and judge whether he seems any more incoherent than usual. Did a stampede of cows run between Kennedy and Vitali during the conversation, because they were late for the swimsuit competition in the Miss Cow pageant?
Did his face start displaying a message that said “buffering” and did they try turning him off, waiting 60 seconds and turning him on again?
And did China engineer Iowa State Fair abortion questions to spare Jewish people, or is that an entirely different racist conspiracy theory?
NBC News reports that the virulent Susan B. Anthony List anti-abortion group lavished many praises upon Kennedy for saying what he said the first time before he changed his mind and his campaign issued a statement about how confused he was.
No real actual Democrats praised him for his reversal, because he’s a piece of shit and fuck him. The end.
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Time for me to tell my lil abortion story. About that "first trimester" thing.
So the clock starts ticking on those 12 weeks not from the date of insemination, but from the date of the previous menstrual period. Which can have happened as much as 4 weeks previously. That is, if you get pregnant around the time when your next period was due, you are instantly 4 weeks pregnant. This can also mean that you have what is called a "false period," which is when your body has already started to shed the menstrual material. So you get a short, little period, which nevertheless looks like a period. If you then think it was your period, you may not realize you're pregnant until the next one doesn't show up - or a week or so after you've been saying, I wonder why my period is late. Can't be pregnancy because last time I fucked someone was more than a month ago. And because you had that "false period," it doesn't occur to you to do a pregnancy test until you are literally 8 or 9 weeks pregnant.
Which is what happened to me when I was in my twenties. I started feeling exhausted, and went to a doctor thinking I had mono. The doctor also did not figure it out and gave me an xray, among other things. Which, if I had wanted the pregnancy, would have been horrifying. By the time I scheduled an abortion, I was very close to 12 weeks already. Luckily, I live in a place where there's no waiting list for an abortion and I didn't have to travel for hours to get one.
Fuck these men. Fuck the lot of them and their fucking stupid, smug, safe, self-serving ignorance.
My father headed the ad campaign that got Bobby Kennedy, Sr. elected US Senator from New York in 1964.
In 1967, he and Ethel came to dinner in our apartment to discuss the 1968 Presidential campaign. I was five years old. After I was introduced, I asked RFK, "Are you going to be President?" Laughter all around. Then I was dismissed.
When RFK, Sr. was shot, my parents were devastated.
If RFK, Sr. was alive today, to see the utter idiocy his son is spouting, he'd never stop throwing up.