Donald Trump’s bombastic rhetoric has defined the 2016 GOP field on every issue — including women’s health, which brings us to #4 on our list of the Year Trump Took Over.
The Republican frontrunner says he would defund Planned Parenthood if elected president, referring to the women’s health organization as “an abortion factory.” After the shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Trump talked about the falsified Center for Medical Progress videos. He said, “There is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, all of the videos that they’ve seen, with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car.”
The real estate mogul’s offensive rhetoric has extended to the rest of the GOP field, as the entire party takes their War on Women to a new extreme. By campaigning on anti-choice policies including no exceptions for rape or incest and ruthlessly investigating lies about Planned Parenthood, the Republicans are alienating women.
Instead of learning their lesson from 2012, the GOP field will continue to try to take away health benefits for women under the Affordable Care Act and impose harsh restrictions on choice and birth control.
Take a look at the rest of the field on Planned Parenthood and women’s right to choose.
This is the year Trump took over:
Ted Cruz
- Cruz supports a personhood amendment that could ban abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, and potentially go so far as to ban common forms of birth control.
- Cruz adamantly opposed the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, claiming it constituted the government “using brute force to force people to pay for abortion-inducing drugs of others.”
- Cruz similarly celebrated the Hobby Lobby decision because he said it prevented the government from forcing employers to provide their workers with contraceptive coverage. In other words: because it would have ensured that employees had access to contraceptives.
- Cruz described the Center for Medical Progress’s misleading Planned Parenthood videos as“[showing] the face of evil” and appearing to “demonstrate an ongoing pattern of criminal conduct.”
- Cruz claimed the CMP videos showed “senior Planned Parenthood officials callously, heartlessly laughing and sipping wine while they barter and sell the body parts of unborn children.”
Marco Rubio
- Rubio opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. When asked about exceptions, Rubio said, “I believe and I’ve always advocated that life begins at conception.”
- Rubio supported personhood measures and when asked if a fertilized egg should have legal protections said, “I believe all life is worthy of protection of our laws.”
- Rubio supported a national ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
- Rubio voted to defund Planned Parenthood multiple times.
- Rubio opposed the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate and joined 89 members of Congress to submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court against the mandate.
- In 2012, Rubio introduced a bill that would let employers refuse to cover contraceptives in their health insurance plans. In response to the bill, a Tampa Bay Times editorial blasted the senator saying the bill showed Rubio believed “women… should be subject to a religious agenda as a condition of their employment.”
- Rubio praised the Supreme Court for the Hobby Lobby decision saying it “is a re-affirmation of America’s commitment to religious freedom and a reminder of why Obamacare is such a flawed law that needs to be entirely repealed and replaced.”
Jeb Bush
- Bush accused Planned Parenthood of championing an “effort to harvest and monetize unborn babies… This is not a fetus, this is a child with a beating heart, in the form of a child.”
- Bush claimed, erroneously, that Planned Parenthood isn’t “actually doing women’s health issues.”
- Bush supports a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks, according to Politico.
- Bush said he didn’t think the health of the mother should be an exception for abortion. On Meet The Press, when asked about exceptions for the health of the mother, Bush said, “Well, the life of the mother, not health of the mother.”
- In 1992, Bush defended the Republican platform on abortion saying it was “fine as it is,” even though it opposed abortion without exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
- When he was governor of Florida, Bush vetoed funding for Planned Parenthood and redirected money for the women’s health organization to abstinence-only education programs.
Ben Carson
- Carson said the highly-edited Planned Parenthood videos released by the shady Center for Medical Progress “[demonstrated] the depravity that has inhabited our society.”
- Carson equated abortion to the practice of “human sacrifice” in ancient civilizations, and has suggested that in order to stop abortion the country needs to “re-educate women.”
- Carson supported the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, calling the ACA mandate “distinctly un-American and abusive to the concept of freedom of religion.”
Chris Christie
- Christie supported shutting down the government to defund Planned Parenthood. He said, “You should put the defunding of Planned Parenthood on the president’s desk. If he’s going to veto it, let the American people see that he stands with the folds who believe that the systematic murder of children in the womb, in a way that preserves the body parts to be sold on the open market, is something that he stands for.”
- As governor of New Jersey, Christie has vetoed funding for Planned Parenthood at least five times.
- Christie supports the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision and Hobby Lobby’s position against covering birth control for employees.
- In an outright and thoroughly debunked lie intended to boost her own profile with public outrage, Carly Fiorina falsely claimed the edited videos showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
- Fiorina supports a 20-week abortion ban and opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
- Fiorina supports shutting down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood.
John Kasich
- As governor of Ohio, Kasich signed a bill that banned abortions after 20 weeks including no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
- Kasich has “signed and supported some of the most stringent anti-abortion legislation in the country.”
- According to FiveThirtyEight, “Since entering office in January 2011, John Kasich…has signed every abortion and women’s reproductive health provision that has landed on his desk.”
- In 2013, Kasich signed a budget “which included one provision that prohibits state-funded rape crisis counselors from referring women to abortion services and another that stripped Planned Parenthood of $1.4 million in federal family-planning dollars.”
- The 2013 budget also mandated that women who want to receive an abortion are “required to pay for and receive a medically unnecessary ultrasound to check for a fetal heartbeat.”
- Since Kasich became governor the number of abortion providers has been cut in half, going from 16 to 8.
Published: Dec 30, 2015