Marjorie Taylor Greene has apparently decided to go the Matt Gaetz route of issuing personal, petty attacks on anyone expressing a desire to maintain their reproductive freedoms. Gaetz has made multiple comments on various occasions about how he thinks women who support abortion rights are unattractive. As for Greene, during a call-in talk show, she snidely told a woman (who she couldn’t even see) that she sounded like she was too old to be able to have an opinion on the matter.
The caller confronted Greene on her virulent anti-abortion views, saying “My body is my body and I don’t want the government telling me what I can do with my body.”
Greene responded to the woman’s voice, which sounded like it was likely that of an older person, and asked, “Ma’am, are you having children any time soon?” Without pausing to let the woman answer, she continued defensively, “That’s my question, I’m asking a legitimate question.” She went on—still without letting the caller answer—to say a fetus is “not your body” and called abortion “murder of another human being.”
This should go without saying, but there is no age restriction on having an opinion about reproductive rights, and Greene’s insistence on belittling this woman over her presumed age—”I don’t think you’re having children any time soon,” she told her repeatedly—is both mean and unnecessary. Abortion is a human right and everyone is allowed to fight to maintain it, whether they can/will/want to have children or not.
Also, given that the abortion bans being passed in state legislatures across the country are overwhelmingly being written and passed by (older, white) men, anti-abortion zealots shouldn’t be arguing that the physical ability to have children is a requisite for having a say on this issue.
I’m not sure how long after this call it happened but at some point, Greene made the bizarre decision to simply disappear. The show went to commercial break and when it came back, Greene was gone.
“Well, we’re back without Marjorie Taylor Greene,” the host said. “She’s gone.”
“We’ll take your calls and comments and whatever you have to say, but she left. She said she’d enjoyed my show and she’s through, and she got up and left. So, she’s outta here. Nothing I can do about that.”
Nothing says “free speech warrior” like cutting and running during an ad break.
(via Vanity Fair, Raw Story, image: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
