“However long I have left in the public debate, or on this earth,” Pence mused, “I’m going to be a part of advancing the cause of life all across this nation.”
Fresh off being named Forced-Birth Prom King, our former Vice President Mike Pence has some more thoughts to share about abortion.
In a Wednesday interview with RealClearPolitics, the former vice president all but acknowledged widespread unpopularity of abortion bans and said enacting a national abortion ban is still “profoundly more important than any short-term politics.” It’s about as close to saying “fuck the midterms, let’s ban abortion!!” that a man who refers to his wife as “Mother” is going to get.
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As other white men in his party try to calibrate their abortion message based on extremely negative feedback, Pence remains singularly, almost comically focused on abortion, as he always has done. As governor of Indiana, Pence quite literally defunded Planned Parenthood in the state, resulting in a widespread HIV outbreak, because Planned Parenthood clinics were the only providers offering HIV testing in some rural communities.
Among a number of anti-abortion bills Pence signed as governor, one required people to bury or cremate their aborted fetuses. The law sparked “Periods for Pence”—a social media campaign that encouraged menstruating people across the state to bombard Pence’s office with updates, information, and even photos of their periods; the founder of Periods for Pence said in 2016 that the campaign was meant to raise awareness that “fertilized eggs can be expelled during a woman’s period without a woman even knowing” she’s pregnant. It’s an important lesson—more relevant than ever, today—that the criminalization of abortion necessitates the criminalization of miscarriage.
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Not unlike a straight woman watching a movie starring Sebastian Stan, our former vice president is frothing at the mouth for a national abortion ban. But the difference between Pence and said straight woman (other than having human rights in the U.S.) is that with Roe gone and Graham toiling away in the Senate, Pence has a decent chance of getting the object of his desire—possibly as soon as 2024. Friendly reminder to vote, people!
