"Keep her legs closed!": Republicans are mad one of them said the quiet part out loud

[marmar]

"Keep her legs closed!": Republicans are mad one of them said the quiet part out loud
Republicans definitely want to punish women for having sex — but they don't want voters to figure that out

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 16, 2023 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) With just over a year to go until the 2024 elections, Republicans are beginning to realize that the abortion issue won't just go away. The GOP has faced a political quandary ever since Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, opened the door to abortion bans, which red states started to enact immediately. On one hand, abortion bans are wildly unpopular, and have only gotten more so as we hear horror stories about women being seriously injured or forced to carry dying babies to term. On the other hand, Republicans don't want to just give up on their long-standing dream of using forced childbirth to punish women for having sex.

To square this impossible circle, Republicans have relied on their favorite strategy: Relentless dishonesty. Lots of pseudo-compassionate noises about women's pain, while insisting that their sadistic impulses are "pro-life." They pretend to support hypothetical exceptions to abortion bans, which for the most part do not apply in actual reality. They make weak attempts to rebrand their agenda as "pro-baby." They feign support for contraception access while supporting organizations that actively work to demolish viable birth control.

That is, most Republicans most of the time are on board with the lying-through-our-teeth strategy. But not all! Meet New Jersey state Sen. Edward Durr, a truck driver-turned-politician who has a habit of saying the quiet parts out loud.

"A woman does have a choice! Keep her legs closed," Durr wrote in a 2020 Facebook post, in which he also called a pro-choice woman an "idiot." He also "liked" a post that called for "spaying women like dogs."

....(snip)....

Durr's viewpoint may not be uttered in public very often, but it's at the foundation of the entire anti-abortion movement. Former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell admitted as much about his state's abortion ban, which he played a major role in writing. In a 2021 Supreme Court brief defending that law, Mitchell wrote, "Women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse." He condemned pro-choice court decisions for accepting the view that "women (and men) should have the right to freely engage to sexual intercourse." ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/10/16/keep-her-legs-closed-angry-that-one-of-them-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/