When Republicans proposed a birth control ‘protection’ bill excluding emergency contraception this week, Sen. Jodi Ernst said, “We want to prevent a pregnancy, not end a pregnancy.” Republicans’ star witness at Tuesday's Senate committee hearing on abortion made a similar false claim, testifying that IUDs and the morning-after pill are abortifacients. So you can imagine my barely-contained eye-roll when conservative lawmakers insisted they voted down Democrats’ federal legislation to protect birth control because “there is no threat to access to contraception.”
‘Gaslighting’ is vastly overused, but in this case it’s hard to imagine a more apt term.
The nightmare that’s unfolded since Roe was overturned has been swift, far-reaching, and defined by women’s suffering: Cancer patients denied abortions, raped children forced to leave their home states for care, women who describe feeling like “walking coffins” after being made to carry nonviable pregnancies to term. That’s to say nothing of those simply denied the ability to decide their own lives and futures, their autonomy stolen overnight.
These stories alone are a horror. But what makes them an insult is Republicans’ continued insistence that everything is just fine. It’s a coincidence that OBGYNs are fleeing anti-choice states. Women going septic? Not their fault. Ever-expanding travel bans? That’s for our protection.
They’re telling us the monster under the bed isn’t real while peeking out from beneath our mattresses.
On the same day doctors testified to the Senate HELP committee about not being able to help teenage incest victims and patients with blood clotting disorders, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy chastised the physicians and Democrats for “fear-mongering” about the consequences of abortion bans. "How dare such a vulnerable moment in a woman’s life be misrepresented and used for political gain,” he said.
How dare who? Surely not doctors, who are risking their medical licenses and prison time to treat their patients. Not abortion rights advocates, working around the clock to reduce even the tiniest bit of suffering brought on by the GOP’s laws.
Are we truly meant to believe that in a moment when conservatives are hushing and head-patting the women begging for their lives that it’s us who has the gall? Fuck that and fuck them.
How dare they pretend that this is all in our heads. In just the last month, the Texas GOP platform called for abortion patients to get the death penalty, Republican Senators introduced a bill to create a government-run website to collect pregnant women’s data, and a new report showed how abortion bans have empowered domestic abusers, now able to wield the power of the state to force their victims into pregnancies they can’t escape.
Republicans want us to buy that this is being done for our benefit? That their bans are there to protect us? How stupid do they think we are?
This is a country where pregnancy is 20 times deadlier than skydiving, and conservatives not only want to force women into childbirth—they’re fighting for the right to deny us life-saving emergency abortions. We know they hate us. We know they want us dead. Why keep up the ruse?
There’s no such thing as plausible deniability when it comes to abortion bans. Not when politicians have to stack maternal mortality committees with anti-abortion activists so the data won’t show how bans kill women. Not when Republicans spend millions of dollars to stop voters from having a say, knowing that Americans are desperate to restore abortion rights.
The war on democracy and truth is just as clear-eyed as the attacks on our bodies, and Republicans are well aware of the consequences for both. And that’s the thing we’d do well to remind Americans: Whether it’s women’s deaths or the nation’s, it’s a price Republicans are willing to pay.
Women are not stupid. Some are ignorant and that’s the vulnerability. Any woman who’s not a fundamentalist zealot will see through the BS. They need to vote is all.
We converted Jessica's examples of Republican gaslighting on abortion into an interactive app. Swipe to see what they say and what they really mean. It includes several Republicans running for office so you can hold them accountable.
Get your 'FREE Abortion Ban Gaslighting Detector'
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/06/08/abortion-ban-gaslighting-detector-project-2025/
There's also a podcast interview with Andra Watkins ("How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life") who was raised as a Christian Nationalist and what that means for women.