Trump’s Behavior Is Unforgivable. Pence’s Policies Are Just As Bad.
Americans are still reeling from the shock and horror of the leaked tape of Donald Trump boasting in 2005 about sexually harassing and assaulting women.
After more than a year of Trump’s relentless and deplorable attacks on women, Black people, Latinos, Muslims, immigrants, veterans, POWs and a Gold Star family, Republican leadership and vulnerable politicians like New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Nevada Rep. Joe Heck are finally — and far too belatedly — renouncing Trump and calling for Mike Pence to take his place at the top of the ticket.
So let’s be clear: We cannot trade in the bully for the pulpit.
Yes, Trump’s words are unforgivable. So are Mike Pence’s policies. Outrage at Trump’s outrageous behavior rings hollow from politicians who have built their careers on attacking women’s basic rights to health care.
Let’s look back at the past year in Congress. This session alone, there were 24 votes to restrict women’s access to health care. Nine of these votes would have blocked low-income patients from accessing STD testing, birth control, Pap tests, and breast exams at Planned Parenthood health centers. Legislators even threatened to shut down the federal government to prevent patients from accessing this essential health care.
Across the states, it’s the same story. More than 330 new laws to restrict access to abortion have been passed in the past six years — a dramatic increase from the number of laws implemented over the past few decades. These laws have nothing to do with protecting women’s health and are intended to shame and humiliate. Mandatory waiting periods make abortion even more expensive and inaccessible by adding out of pocket costs for travel, for child care, for time off of work. Medically unnecessary and personally invasive ultrasounds are required to discourage women from their legal medical decision. And perhaps worst of all are the laws that require doctors to read misleading or flat-out false scripts to their patients before talking to them about an abortion procedure.
Of all the politicians across the country who have for years pursued this agenda, Mike Pence is perhaps the worst perpetrator of them all. As both a member of Congress and a governor, he has been proud of his “obsession” with defunding women’s health care. He was the first member of Congress to introduce legislation to to defund Planned Parenthood, back in 2007. Donald Trump laughingly boasted about sexual assault, but Mike Pence actually supported legislation to redefine rape to in order ban abortions. He wasn’t alone; many of his fellow Republicans still in Congress supported this failed bill as well.
As governor of Indiana, Pence stood by and did nothing as Purvi Patel sat in jail, convicted and sentenced to prison for 20 years because of the outcome of her pregnancy. Trump once said women should be punished for having an abortion; Pence already has a proven record of supporting punishment for women.
Time and time again, these politicians have stubbornly disregarded women’s experiences, even in the face of sexual assault, to pursue their ideological agenda. In Congress, Pence co-sponsored a “personhood” bill — legislation that would have outlawed all abortion and even some forms of birth control. In fact, in 2012, Paul Ryan defended his absolutist, no-exceptions opposition to abortion, even for women who are raped, by saying “that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”
Despite poll after poll showing that the American people do not support this agenda — and the American electorate decisively rejected it in the last presidential election — these leaders have tried to legislate away women’s bodily autonomy and inject themselves into the most private and personal conversations between women and their doctors.
At the eleventh hour, after voting has already started in many states, these Republicans now say Trump’s toxicity and treatment of women is unacceptable. But his record of misogyny was well-documented long before this election even started.
It is an insult to women and to the intelligence of the American people to suggest that the solution to the damage already done by Trump is to replace him with someone whose record of attacks on women, their health, and their most basic rights is even worse. Republican leadership cannot expect us to believe they support, respect, and value women when they have, for so many years, relentlessly fought to strip women of their rights and their dignity.
Pence doesn’t use Trump’s style of gutter language and attacks, but the policies he has fought for, voted for, and enacted are dangerous, hateful, and unacceptable. Republicans have aided and abetted the rise of Donald Trump. Now they would have us believe Mike Pence is somehow better for the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Trump is dangerously unpredictable, Pence is dangerously predictable.
On November 8, women are going to make sure Trump’s brief, misogynistic and terrifying foray into politics, and Pence’s career-long crusade against women, both come to an end.
