Just fuck right off Mike Pence (and the NY Times)

Updated to reflect that indeed the shithole of Texas and the insane voters of Ohio re-elected their unctuous governors who signed laws.

I opened the NY times this morning, and two OpEds grabbed my attention. And by “grabbed my attention” I mean “made my blood boil”. The first was their in house Religious nutter, David French, where he spent a lot of words to basically say that his flavor of Evangelicalism was not the bad one, and that the Pentecostals and Southern Baptists were the ones giving them bad names.

That was bad enough, but then my eyes landed on a guest piece by Mike Pence, “Donald Trump Has Betrayed the Pro-Life Movement”.

This bucket of bilge water is just so full of falsehoods, misrepresentations, and just absolutely erroneous tripe that the Times should have annotated it to fix the bullshit that Pence was peddling.

I mean, right up front he trots this tired trope out:

But while nearly half of our states have enacted strong pro-life laws, some Democrats continue to support taxpayer-funded abortions up to the moment of birth in the rest of the country.

This is lawn fertilizer. First, the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of Taxpayer funds for abortions. But the implication is that Democrats sport elective abortions up to the moment of delivery is just utter twaddle.

Look, abortions do happen in the third trimester, but it is NEVER elective. They are 100% done to either protect the life of the mother, or because of severe fetal anomalies that do not present until later in the term. These are fetuses that often lack organs, brains, or other horrible birth defects, making them unviable, and the continued carriage by the mother places her life at risk.

Then he trots the “reasonable-ness” of the European rules.

While Democrats often hold up Europe as a model for America to emulate, the vast majority of European countries have national limits on elective abortion after 15 weeks. Germany and Belgium have a gestational limit of up to 14 weeks. A majority of European countries are even more restrictive, with Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Italy and Ireland banning abortion on demand after 12 weeks.

There, up to the 15th week (or a few other shorter terms) there are no hinderances, no justifications required. 100% unfettered. Pence seems to think that this is neat and tidy, that there are no late term abortions.

But that is a fallacy, that he either chooses to ignore, or that he is intentionally misrepresenting. Alas, there are strong protections for the life and health of the mother, and thus when medically indicated, the pregnancy can, and is terminated whenever it is needed.

A decision made by the mother and her doctor.

And this is precisely the cause and justification for terminations that happen in the third trimester that Democrats work to protect. And their work is twisted and warped by the religious nutters like Pence to whip their cohort of followers into a frenzy.

Then he turns to his faint praise of Trump. This passage is a particular laugher:

I know firsthand just how committed he was to the pro-life movement during our time in office. Who can forget the way candidate Donald Trump denounced late-term abortion during a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, highlighting how she and other Democrats would allow doctors to “rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

Look, Trump latched on to the anti-abortion message as a way to ensure and capture the support of the Evangelical right. Trump has no convictions besides lining his pockets and gaining power. Everything is a transaction. Even trading three Supreme Court justices for the loyalty of the conservative christian fringe.

Pence seems to really believe that Trump was a true believer.

He then makes some feeble attempt to justify that this retreat from their antiabortion zealotry based on the bad optics, he opines:

While some worry about the political ramifications of adopting a 15-week minimum national standard, history has proved that when Republicans stand for life without apology and contrast our common-sense positions with the extremism of the pro-abortion left, voters reward us with victories at the ballot box. In fact, voters overwhelmingly re-elected Governors Mike DeWine of Ohio, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, after they signed bills prohibiting abortion after six weeks.

Uh, hello, they signed those bills before the Dobbs decision happened. In every single state where there have been elections, or the opportunity to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot, they have been approved by wide margins.

Alas, two retromingent governors who prior to Dobbs signed repressive, regressive abortion restrictions into law were re-elected handily. In Texas Governor Abbott signed their law that front ran the SCOTUS decision, and Mike DeWine in Ohio who had signed a law that was eviscerated in the aftermath of Dobbs.

Pence seems to be lost in a private world where the country at large sees this issue as he does. But that hasn’t been borne out based on actual electoral results.

The final pull from the OpEd:

Now is not the time to surrender any ground in the fight for the right to life. While the former president has sounded the retreat on life at the national level, I pray that he will rediscover the passion for life that defined our four years in office and rejoin the fight to end late-term abortions in America once and for all. The character of our nation and the lives of generations not yet born demand nothing less.

Meanwhile, in states where the most extreme restrictions are going into effect, ObGyn’s are fleeing, women are dying due to complications because doctors are terrified of being arrested for providing basic, essential healthcare, localities are trying to institute controls on highways to check for pregnant women passing through on the way to a state without these draconian restrictions, and there is talk about reinvigorating the Comstock Act to further curtail the availability of the medications that are common in early term terminations.

Mike Pence is a religious fuckwad who really should sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

And shame on the goddamn NY Times for platforming this steaming pile of horse shit without any fact checking or annotation. The paper of record is no longer fit for wrapping fish.

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