Why This Lawmaker Opposes Abortion For Everyone Except His Own Wife And Mistress

[Hepburn]

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) publicly opposes abortion and has repeatedly run for office as a pro-life candidate. Last week, he was one of 242 House members to vote for a proposed 20-week abortion ban that has become one of the top priorities for the current GOP-controlled Congress.

An anti-abortion Republican casting a vote in favor of an abortion restriction is not typically newsworthy. However, DesJarlais’ positions on the subject are particularly controversial, thanks to evidence that emerged in 2012 that revealed he has advocated for at least three legal abortions in his personal life.

Three years ago, transcripts related to the congressman’s divorce trial showed that DesJarlais supported his ex-wife’s decision to legally end two pregnancies. He also had several extramarital affairs, and once pressured a 24-year-old woman to have an abortion after she told him she was pregnant with his child. “You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais told the woman in a recorded phone conversation. “If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let’s do it.”

...

One researcher who studies the pro-life movement says that an interview subject once told him: “Most pro-life women oppose abortion with four exceptions: rape, incest, the life of the mother, and me.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/05/18/3659910/abortion-vote-desjarlais/

He claims he is "pro-life" and in his voting record and personal life he has supported these views "100%." Guess his stance on abortion is 4 exceptions also: Rape, incest, the life of the mother and anyone he knocks up!

[darkangel218]

1. Because he's a hypocritical pos, who only cares about himself.

That's why.

[Hepburn]

2. Your response much defines the term "conservative!"

They always seem to see themselves as an exception to what they think applies to everyone else.

[darkangel218]

3. That would be them. Every each one of them.

Superior to others, and free of wrongdoing. Always someone else's fault.
Psychopaths is what they are. Yet, they roam free in society.

[tblue37]

11. I know 4 different women who got abortions despite having spent years signing antiabortion

petitions and voting straight R as one-issue antiabortion voters. Two of the four also attended several antiabortion marches and protest rallies.

Of the four, the one I know best had managed to have a child after several miscarriages, and then, desperate for a second child, suffered two more miscarriages before finally carrying a pregnancy past the first trimester, only to learn that her fetus was so malformed that it might not even survive to be born, but that even if it did, it could not possibly survive for more than a few tortuous hours or days before dying anyway.

She was also warned that a therapeutic abortion, as soon as possible, was her only hope of ever having another child. She and her mother, who was even more aggressively antiabortion than she, immediately said yes to the abortion. Certainly they were both overwhelmed with grief at having to abort that much wanted pregnancy, especially after so many miscarriages and so much hope that this time she would get her second child, but they understood--when it directly affected *them*--that sometimes abortion is the only acceptable choice.

I am not quite close enough, and not unkind enough, to confront this young woman and her mother about the harm people like them cause to other women who have their own very good reasons for choosing to end a pregnancy. Of course, like so many antichoicers, they had bought wholeheartedly into the misogynistic claim that women were aborting babies all the time because they were selfish and irresponsible (and, of course, slutty) and just using "baby murder" as birth control.

They are devout Catholics, but the other three women I mentioned were all fundamentalist Protestants--two Baptists and one nondenominational.

What I wish I could ask the Catholic woman and her mother, if I were close enough and if doing so would not cause pain, is how she would have felt if on her way to terminate her pregnancy, at a time when she was overwhelmed with grief and with fear that she could never have another child, she had been forced to deal with hordes of rabid fanatics screaming in her face, waving signs with hugely enlarged images of aborted fetuses, and calling her a selfish baby murderer. How would she have felt if she had lived in a state where restrictions passed by misogynistic male legislators, voted into office by people like her and her mother, had forced her to carry that fetus to term, only to have it die in her womb or to suffer terribly and then die soon after birth--perhaps, to pile tragedy on tragedy, leaving her forever incapable of having another child?

And since she herself is quite affluent, I wish I could ask herself to imagine being poor: how would she feel as a poor woman in desperate straits, who could not afford to travel to a state where abortions were still possible, especially since she might have to pay even more for food and lodging because of the 24-48 hour delay imposed to make getting an abortion as difficult as possible? (Besides the extra expense that delay entails, many women can't take that time away from their job--or their family if they have other kids.

Fetus fetishizing antichoice fanatics are incapable of seeing a pregnant woman as someone who has value in herself, even when carrying a fetus, no matter how tiny and undeveloped that fetus is, even when it is nothing more than a minuscule collection of a few cells (which is why so many of them oppose IUDs and many other forms of contraception, the function of which they also consider to be abortion).

A lot--probably most--of them also think a woman should "suffer the consequences" if she dares to have sex, whether she happens to be married (as this young woman is and also was when she had to abort) or not. All too often we hear the disgusting rant, "She had her fun and now she wants to escape the consequences." They want to hang that unintended child around her neck as punishment, as a permanent handicap in her efforts to fulfill her dreams or accomplish her goals.

In fact, I believe that the *major* impulse underlying the rabid antichoice movement is the desire to *punish* women for having sex, and that is why the same people who try to render abortion completely unavailable actively fight against any policies that would provide inexpensive and easily accessed contraception and those that would help support a woman (and thus her baby, as well) if she is unable to properly provide for the child once it is born. That is a feature, not a bug. The child is so much more effective as punishment for having sex if after being forced to give birth the woman is trapped in poverty and misery, unable to get an education or a decent job because she can't even afford adequate housing or food for herself and her child, much less being able to pay for education or training, for the transportation she would need to get to school or to work, or for someone to take care of her child while she works or takes classes.

[font size ="+1"]ON EDIT: [/font]The woman who had to abort because her fetus was badly malformed did manage to get pregnant again, and she gave birth to a healthy baby girl about a month ago--a joyous outcome that almost certainly would have been made impossible had that therapeutic abortion had been unavailable to her.

[niyad]

12. your post actually deserves its own op, so that we can rec it!

[tblue37]

13. If I get a chance I will start a thread. I took more time than I could really spare to tap that out

little 7" Nook.

[tblue37]

14. BTW, did you notice the bit of good news I added on edit? nt

[niyad]

16. I did, and thank you for adding that.

shouldn't it just be a matter of copy and paste into a new thread? with maybe a couple of words of intro?

[tblue37]

17. Copy-paste is a pain on a little Nook. I will do it when I can use my desktop computer. nt

[niyad]

18. thank you. let me know when you do.

[tblue37]

19. Will do. nt

[Dont call me Shirley]

24. Awesome "rant" tblue37! Should be its own OP

[BlancheSplanchnik]

31. hear here!!

Maybe you could question here if you kept to just one gentle question to start with?
Like, what would you have done, or felt, if there had been anti-abortion protesters trying to stop you?

I don't know....tact has never been my strong point.

Great post!!!

[spanone]

4. and the voters re-elected this asshole AFTER finding all this out....

[Hepburn]

5. Because he is a God-fearing man...

...who CONTROLS his women. Only IF he says an abortion is OK, it is OK...because in HIS house (and his mistress' house), he IS the Bible!

[erronis]

22. I think a condition for re-election after conviction should be a castration.

Anyone who forces women to become pregnant against their wills - this doesn't have to be accused rape - should be castrated.

Depending on the circumstances of the act against the women, the castration should be done surgically (perhaps without anesthesia), or chemically.

I don't think anybody will miss having the subsequent children of these types of men absent from this planet.

[B2G]

6. Fucking asshole. nt

[PeaceNikki]

7. Joyce Arthur wrote "The only moral abortion is MY abortion (When the Anti-Choice Choose)"

I can't find it right this second because she just transitioned to a new site, but it's a good read.

Oh, I think this is it (can't access link at the moment to confirm) http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml

[Dont call me Shirley]

8. He says he's Christian, not perfect

[valerief]

9. And yet he expects everyone else to be perfect. Goodbye forever! nt

[Dont call me Shirley]

26. I really wanted to make a joke about...

his bald head looking like a.........ahhhh nevermind!

[Arugula Latte]

15. He can go fuck himself.

[Dont call me Shirley]

25. So many would if they could. LOL

Should I have put the sarcasm thingy on my original post?

[asjr]

10. This guy is from the district where I used to live. You

can bet your bottom dollar it was the Jesus Speak that put him in the political room. This happens all the time in rural America. I loathe the man.

[SpankMe]

20. Oh, God..the motherfuckers! n/t

[McCamy Taylor]

21. Proof that anti-abortion is about control, not life.

[Faygo Kid]

23. =1. Exactly.

[randys1]

27. Uh, folks. I hope this is not a newsflash, and I wish I was exaggerating, but EVERY

single republican/teaparty person is a hypocrite on EVERY issue and area of life.

There are a handful of exceptions, Ted Olson and Gay Marriage.

[brewens]

28. Bob Barr R-GA got busted too didn't he? He was in the news and on TV all the time back

when they were trying to impeach Clinton. I think it came out that the check for the abortion was written on his account and he denied knowing about it. Right! If true, that's reason enough not to ever trust him with any government spending at the very least. He also cheated on his second wife with the woman that became his third wife if I remember right. Another family values champion!

[hifiguy]

29. A turd that walks like a man. nt

[Jamaal510]

30. "Do as I say, not as I do." nt