Tim Scott Gonna Ban All The Abortions Once He's Never President

Thanks for the warning!

Republican Sen. Tim Scott is running for president — I swear! — and he's currently polling worse than diversity and inclusion among his party's primary voters. This apparently frees Scott to boldly embrace incredibly unpopular positions that would prove fatal for a campaign that actually had any signs of life.

 Shelby Talcott at Semafor reports that Scott is "leaning into" his extremist forced birth position in a new Iowa radio ad. Iowa is the first state in the Republican primary race where Scott will probably come in last. He vows to “sign the most pro-life legislation that reaches” his imaginary desk at the White House.

“Our immediate priority should be passing a national 15-week limit on abortion while we support Republican-led states that do even more to protect life," he says.

This is both evil and stupid, like the comic-relief Disney villain sidekicks. Voters have repeatedly made clear that they think Republicans are focused on the wrong things — pointless personal vendettas and draconian legislation policing people's bodies. The economy remains voters' top priority, and few swing voters in key states believe that a "war on woke" will actually fix inflation.

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Scott's fellow South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, has pushed a 15-week abortion ban, and his Republican colleagues begged him to shut up already. Scott himself stumbled over the issue like a rank amateur a few months ago when asked if he supported a national 15-week ban.

“I would simply say that the fact of the matter is, when you look at the issue of abortion, one of the challenges that we have, we continue to go through the most restrictive conversations without broadening the scope and taking a look at the fact that … I’m 100 percent pro-life."

No, sir, that was not simply stated.

He continued, "I never walk away from that. But the truth of the matter is that when you look at the issues on abortion, I start with the very important conversation I had in a banking hearing where I was sitting in my office and listening to Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, talk about an increase in the labor force participation rate for African-American women who are in poverty by having abortions.”

Scott deliberately twisted Yellen's words. She said during the May 2022 hearing, “I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades." She pointed out (correctly) that legal access to abortion allowed women to choose when they'd become mothers and were able to finish school if they chose and increase their earning potential. The key word here is "choice."

However, Scott tried to smear her as a common Margaret Sanger. He suggested that she "callously" suggested that Black women should abort their babies and get back to work in the fields.

"I ran down to the banking hearing to see if I heard her right,” Scott said. “Are you actually saying that a mom like mine should have an abortion so that we increase the labor force participation rate? That just seems ridiculous to me."

Well, it's ridiculous that Scott would use his mother as a prop this way. There's no indication that his mother didn't choose — there's that word again — to have Scott. She also was an active member of the labor force: She retired this year after working 50 years as a nurse.

It might also surprise Scott to know that women don't exist in this world solely to produce future US senators, especially partisan hacks like Tim Scott. The child a South Carolina woman is forced to carry to term under the state's repulsive six-week abortion ban could grow up and cure cancer, but that doesn't change the fact that this woman was denied her personal liberty and bodily autonomy. When it comes to economic policy, gun safety, or even wearing a goddamn mask during a global pandemic, so-called "pro-life" Republicans consistently prioritize their own individual freedom over any perceived collective "good." This is why they aren't "pro-life" but "forced birth."

Scott's political strategy here is weird, as you can expect Republicans to appeal to their right-wing fundamentalist base during a primary election, but once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, those creeps got everything they wanted. Every state a Republican needs to win in a primary already has terrible, no-good abortion bans in place that Democrats are powerless to stop at the federal level. He's now appealing directly to Republicans who want to control people's bodies nationwide, even in states where democracy still exists.

But this isn't about owning the libs in California, Oregon, and New York. Any Republican who wants to defeat Joe Biden needs to flip Michigan or Pennsylvania, where abortion rights aren't just popular, they were a key GOTV driver for Democrats. It's as if Scott wants to help re-elect President Biden, but it's more likely he's just not very good at this.

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