Pro-life leaders criticize Trump for saying it's 'foolish' to oppose rape, incest exceptions
Pro-life leaders are criticizing President Donald Trump, who some supporters say is the most pro-life president ever, after he suggested this weekend that new abortion bans in Alabama and Missouri that don’t include exceptions in the cases of rape or incest go too far.
“The Radical Left, with late term abortion (and worse), is imploding on this issue. We must stick together and Win for Life in 2020,” Trump wrote in a Twitter thread over the weekend. “If we are foolish and do not stay UNITED as one, all of our hard fought gains for Life can, and will, rapidly disappear!”
....for Life in 2020. If we are foolish and do not stay UNITED as one, all of our hard fought gains for Life can, and will, rapidly disappear!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2019 Get Our Latest News for FREE
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Trump’s tweet comes as other prominent Republican leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney joined liberals in voicing concern after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law last week legislation that has been labeled a “near total ban” on abortion in the state.
Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act effectively makes it a felony for an abortion provider to perform an abortion in the state if they are outside of the bounds of the exceptions. The law would not hold women who get an abortion criminally responsible.
The new law allows for exceptions in cases where the mother’s life is at risk or where fetus can’t survive.
Just days later, a bill was passed in Missouri banning abortions after eight weeks without exceptions in the cases of rape and incest.
Trump, whose administration has advanced a number of pro-life policies during his first two-plus years in office, has maintained that he believes in having exceptions in abortion laws for cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother.
In his Twitter thread, the 72-year-old president stated that he holds the same position taken by former Republican President Ronald Reagan.
“We have come very far in the last two years with 105 wonderful new Federal Judges (many more to come), two great new Supreme Court Justices, the Mexico City Policy, and a whole new & positive attitude about the Right to Life,” Trump assured pro-lifers in his thread.
Lila Rose, who runs the pro-life advocacy organization Live Action, responded to Trump’s tweet by thanking him for the pro-life advancements his administration has made. But she argued that in order to be pro-life, “we must be 100% pro-life.”
“A child of rape or incest is not a 2nd-class citizen,” she wrote in the tweet. “No woman or girl is served by abortion or immune to its trauma, including survivors of rape and incest.”
Live Action’s Twitter account responded to Trump’s tweet by posting a video of a testimony provided by Jennifer Christie, who was raped on a business trip and impregnated.
“Rape or incest are horrible situations, and abusers need to be held fully to the law — but abortion is not the path to healing,” the Live Action account wrote in the tweet.
In another tweet, Live Action also reminded followers that Valerie Gatto, former Miss Pennsylvania, was conceived in rape.
“Her mother was brutally attacked at knifepoint when she was 19 — but rejected abortion,” the tweet reads.
Ryan Bomberger, a pro-life activist who himself was conceived in rape and adopted by a loving family, penned an op-ed last week responding to criticisms of the Alabama law titled “I am the 1 percent used to justify 100 percent of abortions.”
“I’m not the ‘residue of the rapist,’ as Senator Vivian Davis Figures described those like me who were conceived in rape,” Bomberger wrote. “I couldn’t control the circumstances of my conception.”
“When it comes to rape and abortion, how do you heal violence with more violence?” he asked.
“Let’s be real here. Even if Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act had a rape and incest exception, the confused Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers would still be out in full force. Fake feminists need to exploit tragedy to promote their false equality. And they never seem to find space in their screeds to talk about punishing the actual criminal — the rapist.”
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who founded the ex-abortion worker ministry Then There Were None, responded to Trump’s tweet with a photo of her adopted son.
“My son was conceived in rape. I would love for you to meet him, @realDonaldTrump, and tell me how his life isn’t as valuable as my children conceived in love,” Johnson tweeted. “He deserved to live and I’m so thankful that he does.”
Johnson, whose memoir was the focal point of the 2019 movie “Unplanned," also responded to critics of the Alabama bill on Twitter last week.
“If we allow some children to die because of certain circumstances, then we become eugenicists,” she wrote. “No better than Hitler.”
In other conservative states, laws have passed that would ban abortion once a heartbeat is detected. Four states in the last year have passed laws banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, while Missouri recently passed its law banning abortion at eight weeks of pregnancy.
Some note that the timing of such bills being passed at the state level are part of a conservative effort to have an abortion case reach the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion a national right.
