Lila Rose and host Ainsley Earhardt ignored the harsh realities of the draconian Texas abortion law and repackaged it for the alternate reality of Fox “News.”
Given Fox News fealty to the anti-choice movement, it’s not a surprise that James O’Keefe protégé Lila Rose, the sweet-faced Madonna of the anti-choice movement, already a go-to gal for anti-choice lies and propaganda, should show up on Fox to sugarcoat the cruel Texas abortion law.
Yesterday's Fox & Friends piece began with Earhardt’s description of the Texas law – a description that totally avoided any mention of the enforcement mechanism; i.e. Texans ratting out anybody who allegedly aids a woman to obtain a post 6-week abortion - a law condemned by the Texas Medical Association and criticized by the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal.
Earhardt then invited Rose to attack White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, by playing a clip of her “snapping” at a reporter. Psaki is getting lots of props for her retort to a EWTN (Catholic news network) reporter’s “gotcha” question about how President Biden, as a Catholic, could support abortion. But the Christian anti-choice right wing is not happy with Psaki’s clever and truthful comeback about how Biden believes that abortion is a woman’s personal choice - a choice that the male Catholic reporter will never have to make. So, unsurprisingly, the very Christian and very anti-choice Earhardt, who was thrilled about a proposed Georgia anti-abortion law, asked Rose - who had already been hailed by Fox for attacking Psaki's remarks - for "your reaction."
Just as unsurprisingly, Rose (beloved by pro-choice sexual harasser, Bill O’Reilly) claimed that Psaki’s comments were “sexist.” She immediately launched into anti-choice propaganda with her assertion that the president’s job is to protect all life, including that of “children in the womb.” She praised Texas’ “right to protect those citizens.” Rose accused President Biden of “working actively against our most vulnerable.”
A grinning Earhardt asked Rose, the author of an anti-choice screed, “Fighting for Life,” about her reaction to the Supreme Court decision which refused to block the law from going into effect. Rose just glowed as she said that the anti-choice movement is “thrilled” and credited the SCOTUS judges who “seem to be sympathetic to that first human right, which is life, it’s a constitutionally protected right." Lila didn’t mention that the 6-week ruling is a blatant violation of the "viability” standard set by “Roe” and “Casey.” She made the dubious claim that everyday that this is law, “over a hundred lives of children” will be "saved." She didn’t mention that some of these “saved “ babies will be the children of rapists and victims of incest, as there are no exceptions in the law.
Rose bragged about how while abortion clinics are closing, there are many new pregnancy centers “helping” women – help which consists of some diapers and a pamphlet on Jesus! She called the SCOTUS decision a “wonderful day for the pro-life fight.”
Rose gave us a biology lesson about how a fetus’ heart starts beating in three weeks of a pregnancy when, in the real world, it’s much more complex. Abetting the anti-choice meme that abortion is savage murder, Rose added that every day, “2300 children are killed." She made the ridiculous, but standard, anti-choice claim that abortion “hurts” women and asserted that her goal is the “complete legal protection for pre-born children” – in other words a total ban on abortion.
The most gag-inducing moment came at the end of the segment when Earhardt, not exactly a paragon of Christian family values, had a little moment of Christian fellowship with Lila Rose: ”Other than learning about Christ, the best day of my life was when I held my baby."
As an example of pure propaganda and misinformation this was classic Fox News. Absolutely no attempt was made to provide an accurate description of the Texas law and the Supreme Court decision. Lila and Ainsley presented the law as something awesome, while, in reality, most Americans support abortion rights. But even worse, there was no reference to the enforcement mechanism which allows any Texan to sue anybody that provides ancillary services (the Uber driver, e.g.) or counseling to a woman who has an abortion post 6 weeks – a point when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.
That the “saved” babies will be born to women in abusive or financially untenable situations is an inconvenient truth not considered by Lila Rose and her trusty sidekick Ainsley Earhardt whose salary, I’m sure, allows her to get the finest child care, something not available to the low income women who will be most affected by the Texas law!
But who cares about facts and constitutional issues – certainly not Fox & Friends!
You can watch the "pro-life” propaganda below, from the Friday, September 3, 2021 Fox & Friends.
Mexico, just across the border from Texas, has a Supreme Court that complied with those civil rights laws. We’re living in an increasingly upsidedown world.
We must remember that Roe and Casey and any semblance of reproductive rights for women were doomed the moment that 2-3 million active Dem voters chose to stay home in 2016 and allowed Donald Trump to squeak through the swing states. One wishes they might not have listened to pundits on the Left and Right who insisted that the Republicans would never ACTUALLY overturn Roe and that everyone who insisted the Supreme Court was important in electoral politics was somehow being “hysterical”.
The reality now is that Texas has succeeded in inflicting a law that makes it pretty much impossible for Texas women to have any reproductive choice should they find out their birth control has failed (which does happen) or if they are raped. And since the now Pence-colored Supreme Court has made clear through the 6-3 supermajority the Far Right now enjoys, we now see that anti-choice attacks will be shrugged at and allowed. Which is why so many angry Red states are about to inflict copycat anti-choice laws to mirror what’s happened in Texas.
Angry Right Wingers love to shout the canard that even if Roe were overturned, this would all just “go back to the states” and everything would still be okay. Except that they leave out some key details. In the years before Roe, women with money could indeed exercise some choice by travelling to another area or country where they could receive competent medical attention. Roe was never about women of means or about how wealthy people could choose to deal with their reproductive issues. But Roe was very much about how non-wealthy women in rural areas (such as in Texas, or Arkansas, or Georgia) would deal with a scenario where they were presented with an unplanned and unworkable pregnancy (and even one that could potentially kill the woman). Before Roe, those women wound up dying in significant numbers, due to their only recourse being unsafe remedies in the proverbial back alley. And we’ve now returned to exactly that time, just as angry Right Wingers have long hoped.