Not to be outdone by Senate Republicans who spent yesterday’s hearing on abortion issues grandstanding and spouting transphobic awfulness, House Republicans spent today trying to ruin their own abortion hearing.
First of all, the minority witness called by Republicans to give “expert” testimony was none other than Erin Morrow Hawley, aka the wife of transphobic and treasonous senator Josh Hawley, who helps run Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian advocacy group. At one point she argued that forced birth is “pro-women” because “babies can be female as well.” That’s the kind of nonsense we’re dealing with here.
Things got even worse when it was time for Republican Rep. Jody Hice to ask questions of the witnesses. If you’re not familiar with Hice, he’s one of the House Republicans recently revealed to have attended a strategy meeting dedicated to pressuring Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election. He also should have no say whatsoever in regulating our reproductive rights, as he made excessively clear during this hearing.
“Is there any instance of a woman giving birth to something that is not a human being, a baby?” Hice asked the witnesses. “Like, I don’t know, a turtle, or as our First Lady suggested, a breakfast taco? I mean is there any instance where [something] other than a human being has been born?”
.@CongressmanHice (R-GA): "Is there any instance of a woman giving birth to something that is not a human being, a baby, like, I don't know, a turtle, or as our first lady suggested, a breakfast taco?" pic.twitter.com/rukuEWBB3P
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 13, 2022
That breakfast taco comment, by the way, seems to be referring to remarks Jill Biden made this week about bodegas and breakfast tacos being representative of Hispanic diversity. While the line was weird and misguided and she’s since apologized, she didn’t actually say a taco was a person or anything to that effect. Hice is clearly just trying to insert a jab at her into a space where it makes no sense.
Not that the rest of his comment makes any more sense than that. He is obviously trying to trick the witness into admitting some version of “life begins at conception” because if a person never gives birth to a turtle, and a fetus or embryo is always going to turn out to be a human, then all fetuses and even embryos are themselves human, right? It’s an inane and scientifically false narrative and Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, tells him so.
“Well there definitely are instances where people have stillborn—” she starts before Hice cuts her off demanding to know if that is “still a person, is it not?” Already we’re getting dangerously close to that oversimplified Republican “what is a woman?” line of questioning.
Goss Graves brings up the issue of viability and Hice seems to become angry, yelling that viability doesn’t determine personhood in his eyes because—according to his total lack of knowledge and expertise—a fetus that can’t exist outside of the womb is still a person just like a person who can’t survive without insulin is a person. “Does that mean we should kill a person who can’t live without insulin?” he asks her.
(I would like to point out that as ridiculous as that analogy is, Hice recently voted against a bill that would cap the cost of insulin at $35 at a time when an estimated one in four Americans is forced to ration or skip insulin doses because of the cost. So I guess the answer is yes, Hice does think it’s OK to kill those people.)
Despite this being a time for questions, Goss Graves doesn’t actually get much of a chance to answer any, since everything Hice frames as a question is really just an opportunity for him to interrupt her and rant about “personhood.” But what she does get to say is powerful and 100% accurate.
“I really hope people are watching today,” she says, “because the question on the table is about abortion, for sure. But actually, the conversation you’re having is about contraception, it’s about in vitro fertilization, it’s about a whole larger set of questions.”
We’ve already seen this playing out, with people being refused access to contraception in response to the Dobbs ruling and states introducing new “personhood” bills to outright ban the things Goss Graves mentioned. It’s been clear from the start that banning abortion was never the end goal for people like Hice, who are determined to control our bodies in any and every way possible.
(image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
