All life should be cherished and protected, as Mr. DesJarlais’s website insists,
- unless it’s your girlfriend who’s unexpectedly expecting, in which case you’ve got to cherish and protect your political future instead. Life begins at conception, as Mr. Rees-Mogg said in a debate,
- unless that life begins inside of a poor brown-skinned woman half a world away, and there’s money to be made from helping her to end it.
.. It’s almost as if these men are fighting to make abortion a crime because they’re more invested in curtailing women’s options and controlling their bodies than they are with saving innocent lives.
.. But what Mr. Murphy’s moral flexibility ultimately reveals is that, for these particular hard-line anti-abortion politicians, it’s not about fetal pain or the sanctity of life. It’s all about control — whether you’re telling a woman she can’t have an abortion, or forcing a woman to get one.