There are lies, damn lies…and lies by the far right wing. Check out this whopper, for instance, by VA GOP Attorney General nominee John Adams this past weekend in a debate with Attorney General Mark Herring.
Just for the record, here’s a transcript of Adams’ ridiculous, laughable remarks (bolding added by me for emphasis of Adams’ lies):
You now, Mark and the Democratic Party have been attacking me on this so let’s just set this straight right now. We’re going to end this debate right now. I have zero interest in eliminating women’s access to birth control. None. Not an issue I think about, not an issue I care about. I’m not eliminating anybody’s access to birth control.
So…where to begin? How about the “Defending Our Values” section of Adam’s website, which states that he is “unequivocally pro-life,” and further that “all human life is precious, created equal, and deserving of legal protection, whether already—or yet to be—born.” He further pledges that he would, as Attorney General, focus on “protecting the unborn.”
Translation: Adams clearly believes that life begins at conception — “personhood,” as the concept is known. What this would mean is clear:
2. If a personhood amendment passed, abortion would be outlawed. Because a person would be defined from fertilization to last breath, any harm caused to that “person” would be considered a crime. That obviously includes abortion, but medical professionals also worry that personhood could mean they’d have to withhold care until a patient’s life is truly in danger so they don’t accidentally do something seen as causing the death of an embryo or fetus, which could be considered murder or manslaughter.
3. Certain forms of contraception would also be illegal. Politicians have already blocked access to IUDs by saying that they don’t allow fertilized eggs to implant, causing an “abortion.” (In reality, IUDs work to either thicken cervical mucus or repel sperm, both means of preventing fertilization.) Many legislators also claim that emergency contraception like Plan B is an abortifacient (it isn’t) or even that standard hormonal birth control pills can cause an abortion (they don’t). If personhood passed, condoms would be the only option for preventing pregnancies (besides abstinence).
4. In vitro fertilization could also be banned. Infertility specialists have spoken out about their fear of this happening because not every embryo created is transferred or will survive the implantation process, and unused embryos are often destroyed.
So that’s what John Adams believes in — banning abortion completely, along with in vitro fertilization and numerous forms of birth control (e.g., IUDs, Plan B, possibly even “standard hormonal birth control pills”). And yes, he’s definitely HAS thought about this issue, as clearly expressed on his website.
Also note that Adams has a long history with this type of thinking. For instance, check out this video, where Adams discusses his clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (“a wonderful, wonderful man…like a second family”). Adams has further called Thomas “the greatest sitting [Supreme Court] justice.” And what are Thomas’ views when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom? Try this.
Thomas objected to the idea that abortion providers have constitutional standing to object on behalf of their patients. “This suit is possible only because the Court has allowed abortion clinics and physicians to invoke a putative constitutional right that does not belong to them—a woman’s right to abortion,” he wrote. He viewed this new decision as a radical reversal of Supreme Court precedent following the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision of 1992 that permitted some restrictions on abortion. “The majority’s undue-burden test looks far less like our post-Casey precedents and far more like the strict-scrutiny standard that Casey rejected,” Thomas wrote, “under which only the most compelling rationales justified restrictions on abortion.” In other words: You guys just flipped the past 25 years of abortion law without acknowledging it.
Thomas is an absolutist, and he suggested that all abortion rulings of the last four decades are illegitimate because the Supreme Court erred in its famous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by affirming a constitutional right to abortion. “I remain fundamentally opposed to the Court’s abortion jurisprudence,” he wrote.
So now, Clarence Thomas protege and great admirer John Adams wants us to believe that eliminating (or restricting) a women’s access to birth control is “not an issue I think about, not an issue I care about.” Yeah, and the word “gullible” is not in the dictionary, either…heh.
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