Category: Abortion

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Abortion Elections GOP

Sen. John Kennedy Gets His A*s Handed To Him When He Asks A Fact-Free Question About Abortion

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was fact-checked and shut down by a witness who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday during a hearing on the topic of abortion.

According to HuffPost, Kennedy tried to suggest that many women have abortions in the third term of their pregnancies.

“At a Senate subcommittee hearing that focused on interstate travel for abortions as more states restrict the procedure, Kennedy mentioned a woman who supposedly asked for an abortion in her 34th week of pregnancy.”

Kennedy asked one witness, “Should the mother at that juncture have the right — clearly a viable child — to abort the child?”

When the witness told the senator she didn’t want to engage in hypotheticals, Kennedy began visible agitated.

“That’s what your side always says. My example’s not unrealistic. I wanna save my time. If your answer’s gonna be, ‘That never happens,’ let me go to Ms. Frye. What do you think?”

Ms. Frye is Jocelyn Frye, the president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, and she proceeded to lay a verbal smackdown on Kennedy.

“Well, Senator, first of all, if you– don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer. But I’m saying to you, Senator, 1%, 1% of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later. So, I think the premise of your question sets up a conversation about abortion that is unfair. It is rarely, is that ever the instance. Most, the vast majority of pregnancies and abortions that are considered late in a pregnancy have to do with severe, devastating medical circumstances.”

Frye continued, “And I understand your point, Senator. I understand your point. But with all due respect, I also think the chances of people sort of getting all the way through a pregnancy and just sort of saying, ‘I don’t want it,’ is disrespectful to women.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) posted a video of the exchange between Kennedy and Frye on Twitter, along with his take on the matter.

“At my hearing on the freedom to travel for abortion care, Senator Kennedy asked our witnesses to respond to a sensationalized, highly unrealistic hypothetical aimed at stoking fear. Ms. Frye’s response says it all.”

Others on social media also praised Frye for effectively countering Kennedy’s blatant lie.

The right of every American woman to make he own reproductive choices is on the ballot in November, and it could wind up being the issue that makes the GOP a permanent minority party.

 

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Abortion GOP

Rep. Jasmine Crockett Skewers Republican Hypocrites By Mocking Their Love Of Viagra

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) used a Thursday meeting of the House Oversight Committee to mock her Republican colleagues’ fondness for erectile dysfunction drug Viagra and also proved that it’s much more frivolous of a medication than mifepristone, which is used by millions of American women to terminate pregnancy.

According to HuffPost, Crockett was questioning FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf.

Crockett asked … whether the “medical management of a miscarriage” could potentially be a “life-saving usage” before asking him about Viagra.

“Would you consider erectile dysfunction as a life-saving usage for Viagra?” Crockett asked.

“Not life-saving,” Dr. Califf answered.

“Not life-saving? OK. Well, I’m going to tell you that based on my research, that mifepristone actually has life-saving characteristics,” Crockett said.

The congresswoman then added, “Yet Viagra doesn’t, and for those that don’t know, Viagra, from my understanding, is actually nearly 10 times greater than as it relates to the risk of death. Yet, for some reason, it’s not sitting in the court right now.”

Noting that the FDA does exceptional work testing and approving drugs used by millions of Americans, Crockett ended her comments with this verbal salvo:

“After putting it through the wringer for decades, women’s lives have been saved, and as a representative from the area that Roe v. Wade actually initiated, I am appalled because, for whatever reason, some people want us to go back to horse and buggy in this country,”

A case before the United States Supreme Court, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, may lead to the banning of mifepristone by American women if the justices decide the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t have the power to approve the use of the drug. That ruling is expected by the end of June.

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Abortion Elections GOP Joe Biden Viral Video

Haunting New Ad From The Biden Campaign Has The GOP Running Scared

Hours after failed one-term former president Donald Trump gave his mealy-mouthed statement regarding his current position on the issue of abortion and restricting the right of a woman to choose, the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign released an ad that quickly went viral online and has Republicans running scared as they desperately try to distance themselves from new anti-choice laws being implemented in states such as Arizona.

NBC News reports the campaign ad deals with a Texas woman who sought to have an abortion and nearly died after she was denied one.

The 60-second ad, which first aired Monday on MSNBC, focuses on Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who sued the state after, she said, she almost died from a miscarriage. In the video, Zurawski and her husband, Josh, discuss how they had started buying things for the baby while Amanda was pregnant, including a baby book.

“At 18 weeks, Amanda’s water broke,” the ad’s text said. “She had a miscarriage.”

As the couple continues to recount memories of the pregnancy, text on the screen reads, “Because Donald Trump killed Roe v. Wade, Amanda was denied standard medical care to prevent infection, an abortion.”

But that’s just the beginning of Amanda’s nightmare, as she eventually wound up rushed to intensive care after suffering from sepsis. She nearly died on two separate occasions and may now never be able to have children, all because the state of Texas passed a restrictive anti-abortion law.

The ad ends with this line: “Donald Trump did this.”

Indeed, Trump did play a role in Amanda Zurawski’s ordeal. He appointed three right-wing justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled that states can tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

As you’d expect, Republicans are now trying to distance themselves from the growing political firestorm that has been caused by their draconian laws, the Guardian reported from Arizona, the latest state to decide women have no right to make decisions about their reproductive health.

Republicans in the state took a surprising stance for a party that has historically championed abortion restrictions – they denounced the decision.

Some of the criticisms of the Tuesday ruling came from politicians who had previously supported the 1864 ban or cheered the end of Roe v Wade.

Trump and every Republican who played a role in the anti-abortion movement now have to own the morass they’ve created and pay a political price with voters, the majority of whom say the government doesn’t belong in private decisions made by a woman and her doctor.

Trump and his GOP did this. Never forget that fact.

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Abortion Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson Swats Down Alito For His Bogus ‘Scientific Knowledge’ Of Abortion

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on Tuesday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made it clear to fellow justice Samuel Alito that she wasn’t about to put up with his so-called “scientific knowledge” of abortion or drugs that allow women to exercise their reproductive freedom.

The Daily Beast notes that the case involves the drug mifepristone, a drug that can be used by women in the privacy of their homes and is now the method of choice for 63% of women across the country.

The justices heard arguments Tuesday morning from a lawyer for the anti-abortion Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which holds that the FDA erred in allowing mifepristone, one of the drugs used in a medication abortion, to be dispensed remotely. The FDA and most major medical associations say the ruling is sound, pointing to studies showing no difference in severe complications when the pills are dispensed via telemedicine versus in person.

Attorneys arguing on behalf of the drug noted that the plaintiffs in the case had no legal standing to even bring the case, which led Alito to ask, “Shouldn’t someone be able to challenge that in court? The American people have no remedy for that?”

Alito later asked essentially the same question of an attorney for Danco, the company that manufactures mifepristone.

“During the questioning of the solicitor general, the statement was made that no court has ever previously second-guessed the FDA’s judgment about access to a drug,” Alito said.

“Do you think the FDA is infallible?”

That prompted Justice Jackson to inquire, “You were asked if the agency is infallible, and I guess I’m wondering about the flip side, which is do you think that courts have specialized scientific knowledge with respect to pharmaceuticals?”

“Do you have concerns about judges parsing medical and scientific studies?”

As Justice Jackson rightly observed, courts and judges do not have special medical knowledge. Doctors and scientists, however, do, and they’re the ones who should make the decisions on what drugs are safe and are available to the public.

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Abortion GOP U.S. Senate

WATCH: Woman Slams Ted Cruz For Lying About Abortion During Senate Hearing

A Senate hearing on abortion turned into a verbal dressing down of Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, neither of whom showed up for the hearing, probably because they knew they’d be confronted and humiliated for their refusal to even consider that a woman has a right to an abortion.

Amanda Zurawski was the witness testifying, and she explained that she almost died after she had a medical emergency while pregnant and had to wait until she was on the verge of death before she was allowed to obtain an abortion in the Lone Star State.

“We’ve heard a lot today about the mental trauma and the negative, harmful effects on a person’s psychological well-being after they have an abortion, supposedly,” Zurawski said. “And I am curious why that is not relevant for me as well. Because I wasn’t permitted to have an abortion, and the trauma, and the PTSD, and the depression that I have dealt with in the eight months since this happened to me is paralyzing. On top of that, I am still struggling to have children.”

That horrific situation, Zurawski explained, was forced on her by those who try to make it more difficult for women to get an abortion.

“And I wanted to address my Sens. [Ted] Cruz and [John] Cornyn, neither of whom regrettably are not in the room right now. I would like for them to know that what happened to me, I think most people would agree, was horrific. But it is a direct result of the policies that they support. I nearly died on their watch. And furthermore, as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future. And it is because of the policies that they support.”

She concluded her testimony by saying there are other women just like her.

“What happened to me was horrible, but I am one of many. And quite frankly, I am lucky. I am lucky that I have a husband who could take me to the hospital, I don’t have other children that I had to worry about finding childcare for. I have a job that was understanding that allowed me to grieve for three days as I waited to almost die. What about all of the women that don’t have the same opportunities, that don’t have access to health care? They don’t have health insurance; they don’t have a partner? What about them?”