Dispatch from Gilead: DeMint the smarmy patriarch
by digby
My God. He really does believe that women don’t know what pregnancy is and are happy to have the state educate them on the subject:
“The more the ultrasounds have become part of the law, where a woman gets the opportunity to see that there’s a real child, it’s beginning to change minds, and I think that’s a good thing,” DeMint said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It’s time that the 3,000 babies we lose every day have some people speaking up for them.”
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow pointed out that women weren’t given the opportunity to have an ultrasound, they were forced to have a medically unnecessary ultrasound by the state. She added that in many cases women were subjected to trans-vaginal ultrasounds.
“So it’s an invasive vaginal forced procedure that a woman cannot say no to by order of the state government,” Maddow continued. “And that is all right with you. I understand that. You feel that you’ve got an interest strong enough to override a woman’s desire to not have that happen to her that you can insist that it does as a legislator. But most American women I think are going to balk at that.”
DeMint, however, insisted that some women wanted the state to force them to have an ultrasound.
“She’s forgetting about the thousands of women who want an informed choice, who want the opportunity to get a free ultrasound, which they can get not from Planned Parenthood but from a lot of these pregnancy centers.”
This is the most infuriating kind of anti-abortion paternalism — some creep like Jim DeMint thinking that women are too dumb to understand what pregnancy is — or, alternatively, just wanting to punish them with an invasive test and a guilt trip for deciding they aren’t ready to give birth. This is the argument that gives away the underlying sexism.
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