His views on abortion are extreme and hypocritical
TV doctor turned Republican senatorial candidate Mehmet Oz has been tough to pin down on abortion.
He claims to be “100% pro-life,” but he also has some exceptions. And as recently as 2019, Oz defended Roe v. Wade.
But now, The Daily Beast has obtained audio from a campaign event this May where Oz staked out his most extreme position yet, telling voters he believes abortion at any stage of development is “still murder,” including from the moment of conception.
“I do believe life starts at conception, and I’ve said that multiple times,” Oz said during the event, a tele-town hall held a week before the Republican primary.
“If life starts at conception,” Oz added, “why do you care what age the heart starts beating at? It’s, you know, it’s still murder, if you were to terminate a child whether their heart’s beating or not.”
He was answering an attendee who wondered how Oz could square his current anti-abortion stance with his statements from 2019, specifically that “the heart’s not beating” six weeks into a pregnancy.
Interestingly, back in 2019, before Dr. SnakeOil became a full-fledged wingnut he was pro-choice and he said the opposite:
He was answering an attendee who wondered how Oz could square his current anti-abortion stance with his statements from 2019, specifically that “the heart’s not beating” six weeks into a pregnancy.
The one-time surgeon explained that, at the time of the 2019 interview, he had been “concerned” about making sure anti-abortion laws could be enforced.
“My mother-in-law wrote a lot of the original pro-life literature in Montgomery County,” Oz told the conservative audience. “My argument in that radio interview was as a doctor, a heart starts beating at around nine weeks. So I was concerned that if legislators picked a timeframe that’s not medically accurate, it would invalidate the law.”
Oz did in fact say something to that effect in the 2019 Breakfast Club interview. “If you’re going to define life by a beating heart,” he said, “then make it a beating heart, not little electrical exchanges in the cell that no one would hear or think about as a heart.”
He’s completely full of shit:
The context in that 2019 interview, however, was that Oz was politically pro-choice.
He was “really worried,” Oz said during that interview, about the harmful consequences for women’s health if Roe were overturned.
He even took a shot at people who believe life begins at conception—as Oz now says he does.
“Just being logical about it,” Oz said then, “if you think that the moment of conception you’ve got a life, then why would you even wait six weeks? Right, then an in vitro fertilized egg is still a life.”
He hasn’t said if he’s against in vitro fertilization but you can bet he’s going to be grilled about it. That’s an extremely unpopular stance but it’s the only logical conclusion if you believe that life begins at conception which he now says he does.
Oz is a perfect Trump candidate. He’s an inveterate liar and crooked TV celebrity. God help us if he wins.
Meanwhile, he’s making fun of John Fetterman’s health and the media is now eagerly helping him by demanding the Fetterman “come clean” about his health as if his illness is some kind of scandal that disqualifies him from office. He had a stroke. He’s recovering. So did Senator Ben Ray Lujan from New Mexico this summer. Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein had one a while back. Nobody suggested that they should resign or stalked them asking for every detail of his medical files.
Fetterman is running for the Senate not the presidency. There are no national security implications, he can be replaced by the governor if he dies, and there is zero reason to believe that knowing more about his medical situation will alter anyone’s voting intentions.
So why do they do it?
Someday we really need to ask about this media habit. There are times when health is a legitimate issue but they are inconsistent in the way they approach it. Most often they treat it as a personal affront if a candidate doesn’t tell them all their intimate medical details when it really is nobody’s business and will make no difference in their job performance or if voters know or don’t know. Fetterman’s case is one of those. He’s not going to drop out of the race and his voters are not going to vote for someone else so really, what’s the point?