Rachel Maddow points out Trump gaffe on punishing women for abortions is actually GOP unspoken policy
Rachel Maddow admonished the mainstream media for not pointing out that Donald Trump’s ‘punish women for abortion‘ gaffe is actual GOP policy. The clip starts with Maddow stating the following.
The media narrative and the political narrative that have come up in the last 24 hours in response to what Donald Trump said yesterday about abortion and what it means to be anti-abortion and what it means to want to ban abortion in this country, it is so out of touch and so facile right now it is mind bending. Reporting on what the anti-abortion movement is. Reporting on that movement’s aims, reporting on what it means to be a pro-life politician doesn’t just mean writing down what they want you to say about them. You don’t have to use the antiseptic language and chosen phrases they choose to use themselves when they describe their own position. You don’t have to talk about them only the way they like to be talked about. When you talk about them in terms of their actual policy goals in an objective way, you very quickly realize what Donald Trump did yesterday, it may be viewed as a gaffe, but it wasn’t a gaffe. Right? He just used blunter language than the anti-abortion movement likes the use in public. Let’s just get real about this for a second. If you are pro-life, that means you don’t think a woman has a right to have an abortion if she wants one. If you’re pro-life, that means you think there isn’t a right to get an abortion. It means you are anti-abortion. If you’re anti-abortion, it doesn’t just mean that you don’t get an abortion in your own life. It means that you believe nobody else should be able to get an abortion either. When a politician says that he or she is pro-life and will govern as such, what that means is that they would like abortion to be outlawed. It means they want the United States of America to be a country in which getting an abortion is a crime. If getting an abortion is a crime, that means anybody who gets an abortion is a criminal. Follow me here.
But Rachel did not end there. She points out that if GOP anti-choice policies were to be instituted, then a woman who gets pregnant is obligated by government decree to take the pregnancy to term. While Donald Trump allows for exceptions, Ted Cruz intent on controlling a woman’s body is absolute. Cruz wants abortion to be a criminal enterprise irrespective of circumstance. In other words, if a woman is raped or is impregnated via incest, she must carry the pregnancy to term.
Donald Trump simply articulated GOP policy aloud. Rachel Maddow admonished the mainstream media. She called them out for making Trumps faux gaffe seemed different than GOP policy.
Just a note to the national media and to the beltway media on this subject. I know everybody is all over Donald Trump on this. ‘Oh, what does this mean for his campaign.’ Covering a story like this does not mean just writing down what people want you to say about them in he terms they want you to use. The idea that there is any distance at all between what Donald Trump said yesterday on this subject and the aims of the anti-abortion movement in this country that is a fallacy. And one that no responsible person should repeat.
Well said, Rachel!