Anti-Abortion Tea Party Congressman Who Asked Mistress to Get Abortion Could Win Primary

From Mother Jones:

Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who pressured a woman—one of two patients he admitted having affairs with—to get an abortion in the 1990s, appears to have narrowly avoided becoming the fourth Republican incumbent to lose a primary this year. With 100 percent of precincts reporting on Thursday, he led state Sen. Jim Tracy by 35 votes—34,787 to 34,752. (The results are not official and a recount is possible, although the state has no law mandating one in such circumstances.) The abortion revelation emerged after DesJarlais' 2012 primary, when the only thing standing between him and reelection in the deeply Republican district was a token Democratic candidate in the general election.

More here.

This reminds me of the proverbial soccer mom who is staunchly pro-life...until her teenage daughter gets pregnant. I have absolutely no doubt that many, many Americans who identify as pro-life are quite sincere, but stories like the one linked above, and there seem to be a lot of them, when put together with anti-birth control attitudes, anti-sex ed attitudes, and opposition to giving assistance to poor single mothers, all make me kind of not take the pro-life movement too seriously these days. From where I sit, it seems to be a bunch of empty and contradictory rhetoric, more about scoring political points and scolding the sluts than it is about saving lives.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

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