Jonah Goldberg:
Wendy Davis, a Democratic state senator running to replace Rick Perry as governor of Texas, owes her political stardom to two things: a pair of pink sneakers and her unstinting support for a woman’s right to terminate a late-term pregnancy in a substandard clinic. Yay, feminism!
Last year, Davis led an eleven-hour filibuster — that’s where the sneakers came in handy — to block legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks and require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that hospital-style surgical centers do.
This was all going on against the backdrop of the sensational Kermit Gosnell case in Pennsylvania. Gosnell ran a bloody, filthy “clinic” where he performed late-term abortions with a barbarity you’d expect to find in a Sawmovie. Sometimes he’d “snip” the spines of fully-delivered babies with a pair of scissors. His instruments were so unsanitary that some women got STDs from them. Cat feces was a common sight on the procedure-room floors.
In short, you didn’t need to be an abortion-rights activist to find the story of interest, but you’d certainly expect an activist to be up to speed on it.
Working on that theory, The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack caught up with Davis last August to ask her a few questions.
McCormack noted that once you got past the squalor and filth of the clinic, Gosnell’s illegal late-term abortions weren’t all that different from legal late-term abortions in other states. “What is the difference . . . ,” McCormack asked, “between legal abortion at 23 weeks and what Gosnell did? Do you see a distinction between those two [acts]?”
“I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case,” Davis replied. “But I do know that it happened in an ambulatory surgical center. And in Texas changing our clinics to that standard obviously isn’t going to make a difference.”
She should have stopped with “I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case” — because in the words of the grand-jury report, the “abhorrent conditions and practices inside Gosnell’s clinic [were] directly attributable to the Pennsylvania Health Department’s refusal to treat abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities.”
So the one thing she claimed to know wasn’t true. Also, what curious incuriosity. If you were suddenly a national leader on an issue you felt passionately about, wouldn’t you want to know what happened in a case that cuts to the heart of your cause?
Not Davis. Her time is better spent denouncing the ignorance of women who disagree with her. When McCormack asked what to make of the fact that a majority of American women support a ban on late-term abortions, Davis responded, “I again think that a lot of people don’t really understand the landscape of what’s happening in that arena today.”
Think about that. In the course of a short conversation, she revealed that she didn’t know what she was talking about while casually dismissing the majority of American women who disagreed with her as not knowing what they’re talking about.
Let’s fast-forward to 2014. Davis was recently interviewed by Jorge Ramos of Fusion TV. He asked her, “When does life start? When does a human being become one?”
Davis answered with a non-answer: “You know, the Supreme Court of course has answered this decision, in terms of what our protections are.” Blah blah blah.
Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics slammed Davis for being “too cowardly to give a straight answer, let alone a thoughtful one, to a straightforward question that goes to the heart of a matter she has made the signature issue of her political life.”
Why is it with dimocrats – the so called ‘issues’ are always the same? And these same issues are always in the forefront of their political careers.
Unless as a women, or as a man you lack any form of empathy, any form of … an abortion, in my sense would be emotionally and physically devastating…
…. unless it is done for the health of the woman…that she could die – which is a totally different situation…
….abortion to me is just taken too lightly… a life is treated like throw away furniture…Goshnell and those like him, reminds me of a real life mad scientist…the kind you would only see in a horror movie…but, he would not have ‘customers’ if abstinence was a prevalent life concern…
…BUT! ‘free love’ born out of the 60’s liberal generation…surely took care of that…
Is it any surprise Wendy Davis (elitist wannabe politician) would blatantly “Dismiss” that a MAJORITY of women do not agree with her… and look down her nose at them as though ‘they’ are idiots? or dismiss the negatives they think and feel about Abortion in general?
Would Wendy Davis have aborted her kid(s)? And if not, why not? That would reveal even more of her true feelings on the subject…
….right now she sounds pretty clueless…
@FAITH7:
as always.
If she were a coward, she wouldn’t be taking a strong and very public stand against the people who want to roll the world back to a pre-Rowe vs. Wade situation with regard to the fundamental right of every woman to have full control of her own body’s reproductive function.
@Greg:
If you read the story, she is called cowardly because she will not support her own beliefs based on her filibuster. For example, she ducked the issue here (and repeatedly)
She’s just a dipsy blonde wanting publicity.
@Greg:
She gave up control of her reproductive rights when she allowed some man to dump his sperm into her.
On top of that, guess what issue Abortion Barbie is NOT running on? Yep, that’s right; abortion. And guess what issue appears no where on Abortion Barbie’s campaign website? Yep, that’s right; abortion.
So the very issue she cut her chops on is the very issue she is running from now. Consequently, the cowardice of Wendy Davis is blatant.
@Greg:
If she had ‘full control’ of her body, why did she get pregnant. Once she’s made the decision to let her body get pregnant, why isn’t she then required to allow the child to live? Shouldn’t she have exercised her option before getting pregnant?
@Redteam: @retire05:
For the life of me, I can’t understand where this War on Women meme came from. And to think, Obama won the women’s vote 55%-44% in 2012. Why? I just don’t get it.
@Tom:
If you really believe there is a “war” on women, then you should do your level best to have the party that you support (Democrats) stop canonizing men who actually warred against women; i.e. Bill Clinton, a sexual predator and rapist and Ted Kennedy who actually killed a woman. And let’s not forget John Kennedy who seemed to love hookers and Hollywood movie stars, not to mention that he and his brother, Bobby, played swap with Marilyn Monroe.
Instead, you lionize these men. They are revered and held is such high esteem they have become God-like for Democrats.
I just don’t get it.
@retire05:
What a disappointingly boring response. Three men were allegedly less than gentlemen in their personal lives, and that impacts the hundred million plus American women more than Republican policy how? Please, I was hoping for more of your and Redteam’s Frick and Frack commentary on your contempt for those dipsy sluts. You know whom I speak of, Ma’am: American women living in the 21st century.
The GOP’s fundamental problem? It’s been hijacked by people who are clueless. Even about the fact of being clueless…
@Tom:
Let’s see; Bill, Ted, Jack and Bobby. Perhaps your Common Core math counts that as three, but I would say four would be the real number.
And just what would that Republican “policy” be, Tom?
Oh, how easily the term “slut” rolls off your fingers, Tom. I know lots, and lots of women, and none of them are sluts.
Let me tell it to you in language hopefully you can comprehend. Women are more than Democrats want to make them. They are more than just walking, talking vaginas who are controlled by their sexual organs to be pitied as nothing more than victims of the evil Republicans. They are smart, capable, talented and independent, not needing Daddy Democrat to save them from the world. The damsel in distress image went out a long time ago, Tom. But it is you Democrats that want to perpetuate that image. And any woman worth her salt resents the Democrats insinuations that she is nothing more than sexual organs that need to be cared for by the Democrat Party.
Of course, the biggest winner in the abortion debate are you men. Lay down with some poor unsuspecting, foolish girl who, when she turns up pregnant, you can brush her off like some much sand and tell her to get an abortion and you’re off the hook for 18 years of support for what was supposed to be nothing more than a good time. You want sick? Well, it’s sick for a woman to want to murder her own child, but even sicker that you men don’t care if your child is murdered if it absolves you from responsibility.
If there is a war on women, making them less than they are and nothing more than body parts, it is being waged by you Democrats. But hey, what different did it make if a Democrat really raped a woman or killed a woman because he was in a drunken stupor or traded a woman between brothers? It’s just so much acting “less than gentlemen” to you.
@retire05:
Confused? I hate having to explain the joke. I used that word because you’re trying to slutshame “Abortion Barbie”. Get it? Believe me, all those women who voted for Obama get it.
@Tom:
Where did I call Abortion Barbie a “slut?” Fact is, I don’t think Wendy Davis is a slut. A slut gives her wares away. Davis sold hers to a well heeled Fort Worth lawyer for the price of her last two years at TCU and her Harvard law degree who she promptly dumped when the tab for that education was paid.
Fake bleached blond, gold-digger, cheat (according to her ex-husband who filed for divorce listing infidelity on her part), opportunist, user, derelict mother, ethically challenged and liar, yes. Slut? No.
@retire05:
Hilarious. Now that we’ve cleared up Abortion Barbies’ sins I can’t imagine any sensible woman not agreeing with you. The central mystery remains. Do you have any thoughts as to why women vote overwhelmingly for Obama and Democrats, considering the right and the Republican Party are obviously not hostile towards them, at least the ones who are saintly, prudish and in the kitchen?
@Tom:
I’m not sure what you mean, war on women. We’re talking about the war on babies, 55 million killed in the US alone since Row v Wade. I think every woman has the right to not get pregnant. If she wants to control her reproductive system, let her do it prior to pregnancy.
@Tom:
This dipsy slut is one that the court would not give custody of her own child to. That your model for women?
@Tom:
because there are more women that want to be supported by the government than by a husband. They want freebies while not having to work for them. Working women support the tea party and the conservatives.
@Redteam:
Ah, there’s that enlightened attitude that endears female voters to the Republican party. Please, tell us all more about women. I would ask an actual woman, but you seem to be a leading authority.
@Tom:
An ‘actual’ woman vs ?
If you say so, I’m not sure I would have put it that way.
I think this is the very heart and soul of the argument and problem of communication, Faith.
Recall Obama’s ”reasoning” against the Sisters of the Poor,” who claimed their Christian consciences would NOT allow them to buy abortifactants in their medical coverage of workers.
Obama basically told them his weird little ”out” absolved their consciences!
But, of course it doesn’t.
Getting abortifactants for FREE is still an outrage to a Christian conscience.
The problem is understanding a sensitive conscience when one’s own conscience is seared.
A hardened conscience cannot fathom the emotional devastation a sensitive conscience suffers.
In a recent study (2012) 36% of all abortions were performed on women who had already had one abortion before.
The issues of conscience are over for these women.
Just as the issues of conscience are over for the nuns in the Sisters of the Poor.
They would NEVER have even one abortion.
I went to school with the younger brother of a very blond, Nordic-looking guy from a Jewish family.
One day I asked the younger brother why his older brother looked so different.
Turned out he used to have three older siblings.
But they were all killed in Nazi camps during WWII.
His mother was raped and became pregnant by a Nazi.
That is his older brother.
His mom could have gotten rid of the baby because the war ended and she was barely showing.
Instead she and her husband renewed their vows before that child was born and raised it as their son.
Later they had one more child, my classmate.
Some people could never understand that.
They would abort.