One hundred fifty years after President Lincoln foresaw a "new birth of freedom" in his Gettysburg Address, the folks at MSNBC are busy celebrating abortion.
From Chris Jansing to Thomas Roberts, to liberal darling Alex Wagner, the all-liberal network has chosen November 19 as the newest abortion day at the “Lean Forward” network. Perhaps the most obnoxious abortion segment on MSNBC on November 19 was during Now w/ Alex Wagner, where the MSNBC host featured liberal comic Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, to promote Monday's online abortion fundraiser for the women of Texas and a new campaign she was calling “From V To Shining V,” the "v" presumably standing for "vagina." [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
The segment began with host Wagner falsely whining to her audience that in Texas, “as many as one-third of the state’s 36 abortion clinics could be forced to close and indeed, some of them already have” following the passage of new abortion clinic safety standards across the state. Wagner failed to inform her audience that no laws in Texas force a single clinic to close, but rather impose on them stricter standards to continue operation. This has led some abortion providers to conclude it's better to close than to invest money in facility upgrades. That, however, is a far cry from an outright ban on abortion clinics.
As the segment progressed, Ms. Winstead bizarrely asserted that by abortion clinics potentially closing their doors in places like Texas women will have less “access to affordable birth control" and so "you aren't talking about health care or abortion anymore.” Of course, nothing in the law is stopping Planned Parenthood from operating purely non-abortion-performing clinics which simply dispense birth control and family planning counseling, nothing, that is, except for abortion-revenue concerns. Handing out "free" birth control costs donors money, but providing abortions is a net money maker for Planned Parenthood.
Winstead is clearly shilling for abortion clinics by lying that they are the only option for “affordable birth control.”
Not surprisingly, the bizarre segment didn’t end there, with Heather McGhee, the Vice President of the liberal think tank DEMOS, getting confused as to whether babies were fetuses or not:
It creates this fake divide between a woman and the fetus she's carrying. So it's the fetus’s rights, the fetus’s pain, and not actually the woman without whom this child, this fetus could never have life. Right?
A fake divide? The human fetus is a biologically and genetically distinct human being from his or her mother. It's utterly unscientific for McGhee to pretend a human fetus is not a separate human being, regardless of the scientific merits of the claim that fetuses can feel pain.
As icing on the bias cake, the segment concluded with Wagner and Winstead chanting “From V To Shining V” all while Ms. Winstead held up both of her hands in the shape of a “V.”
What a sick celebration of callous disregard to the lives of the unborn.
Happy abortion day everybody.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
Now w/ Alex Wagner
12:37 p.m. Eastern
November 19, 2013
ALEX WAGNER: Three weeks after he said that Texas governor Rick Perry got one big step closer to what he actually wants, which is a world without reproductive choice. On July 18th Perry signed into law the nation's toughest set of abortion restrictions banning abortion at 20 weeks and piling on additional and unnecessary requirements for clinics and doctors. Last month a federal judge in the state of Texas struck down some of the restrictions on doctors deeming them unconstitutional. But days later, a panel of three conservative judges reinstated the law. As a result as many as one-third of the state’s 36 abortion clinics could be forced to close and indeed, some of them already have. In response to these and other assaults on women's reproductive rights, last night comedians extraordinaire Sarah Silverman and Lizz Winstead hosted an online pop-up telethon to raise money for the women of Texas. But the lone star state is far from the only frontier in the battle against reproductive freedom. 13 states have passed 20 week bans. A federal 20-week ban passed the House of Representatives in June and a similar bill was introduced in the Senate earlier this month. Today voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico will decide whether to ban abortions after 20 weeks when they vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance. Joining us now is co-creator of "The Daily Show" Lizz Winstead. Lizz it’s always great to see you.
LIZZ WINSTEAD: Thanks, Al.
WAGNER: Congrats on doing the right thing here. I have to ask you this question. Why as a society do we feel so much more comfortable placing restrictions on women than on men? And I'll call to your attention in Ohio State Senator Nina Turner introduced a bill in 2012 that would have limited men's ability to get Viagra and require them to receive psychological counseling. And sort of when that was announced it was like we would never do that. That's outrageous. Or an amendment to an abortion bill that said, every sperm is sacred. Right? These are ridiculous propositions. And yet when we flip it on women, it's totally legit.
WINSTEAD: Totally legit. It just goes so far beyond abortion. When you start saying we want to reduce the number of abortions and the way what they want to do that is to remove all access to affordable birth control, you aren't talking about health care or abortion anymore. You're talking about control and you’re talking about not wanting to give up your own power to a group of society -- half a society, in fact, who would like to be at the table making decisions about themselves. Not only about their health care but about the world around them that they live in. And I think that that really, is it.
WAGNER: What's stunning to me, heather, is that when you look at the statistics, Planned Parenthood says that roughly one in every three American women will have an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45. That's a lot of women. Rick Perry was out there saying the sound clip that we played at the beginning of this segment. We want a world without abortions. Well let’s be clear. It's not like women who are for reproductive freedom want a world with abortions. They are not actively seeking an abortion in every house. They want women to be able to choose to have control over their own bodies and make reproductive choices if necessity dictates. And I think it's a really important distinction that is rarely made.
HEATHER MCGHEE: And I think that the idea is that women actually who have abortions; the majority of them are actually mothers themselves already or will be someday. So this idea that there are these evil harpies going around killing children and then there are the sweet sacrosanct mothers and wives. We are the same people. I think Lizz you really hit it on the head. It's about control and power and self-determination. The boom in women’s economic activity that came when we saw reproductive choice and healthcare come in the 1960s and '70s. We can't go back. We cannot go back and that's really what this is about.
WINSTEAD: Well and I would also just like to point out is that, we've never had a world without abortion. And when we talk about abortion, and you can only imagine the flack we got for doing a fundraiser to raise money so low income women could get abortion care. When we talk about abortion and that women need it. Women need it. If one in three women are needing an abortion. That's everyone-- one of us at this table, I will say it's me, I'm not afraid to say, I did have an abortion. So the one in three it is me. And so to act like there was somehow some age of abstinence that we have to get back to. Do you remember that in history in college? Studying that, no.
MCGHEE: I remember women being killed.
WINSTEAD: That’s exactly correct. An so because of that everybody wants to scream and say things like what about these irresponsible women who just keep getting pregnant. You know what are we going to do about them? I’m like; we’re going to have them have a bunch of kids? Is that your plan? Because it’s just an endless barrage of disinformation and so when this comes down it's never based in fact, it’s never based in medical fact, and it's based in shame.
WAGNER: Yes, and I think that's also, when we talk about these 20-week bans. The great piece of misinformation is this, women who want their unborn fetuses to feel an undue amount of pain. In fact, this notion of fetal pain Heather has been discredited by the Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard University researchers, British College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. This is about, and I’ll read an anecdote from Dr. Ann Davis who performs late term abortions. She says when you're sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy, with a severe fetal anomaly, she’s depressed, she’s stressed, and she’s now worried is my baby going to feel pain. It is just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science they are based in politics. They are, as Lizz said, efforts to shame and humiliate women in and around a decision that is more difficult than anyone and certainly any man proposing this stuff, can possibly begin to conceive of.
MCGHEE: And, it alienates, it creates this fake divide between a woman and the fetus she's carrying. So it's the fetus’s rights, the fetus’s pain, and not actually the woman without whom this child, this fetus could never have life. Right? It's this idea that we have these mothers on the one hand and, again, these people who want to hurt children. That's the idea. And legally it is really -- if you look at where we've come from Roe v. Wade, which is really about the rights of women and the rights of people to have a certain sphere that the government does not intrude in. To where we are right now not on your end but on political fundraisers an entire political machine that is about this most intimate choice and this most intimate decision. It is the exact opposite of the idea of personal liberty and freedom from government intrusion.
WAGNER: Lizz, you were doing this for the women of Texas but as we noted today, in Albuquerque, New Mexico they are trying to push this 20 week ban. New Mexico’s a blue state. The fact that this has taken hold and is kind of sweeping the country, these restrictions that are really meant to incrementally roll back fundamentally a woman's right to choose. I mean how many telethons can you have in the next two years.
WINSTEAD: Well let me tell you what. That's part of the plan because Albuquerque is now the new breeding ground for what is happening. And what we’re trying to do, we did this telethon to benefit women of Texas. But what we're going to launch is a bigger strategy, that we’re calling “From V To Shining V.” We want to get women and men and everybody to understand that now city councils, mayors, your local legislature, this is really meat and potatoes boring politics that most folks don’t care.
WAGNER: Local.
WINSTEAD: Local. And if we can sauce it up with the way I do with some humor, and start basically exposing these Ted Cruz's and celebrating the local Wendy Davis’s in all of our states. Because that was the biggest thing that didn't happen after Texas. We watched thee amazing women in Texas rally, we watched Wendy Davis. We didn't take their inspiration and look in our own back yards and say what's going on in my state? Who are the villains in my state? Who are the heroes in my state? And now is the time that activists and everybody has got start taking a look at what's happening.
WAGNER: From V to Shining V. I can say that twice.
WINSTEAD: And go like that. There it is.
WAGNER: And there you go. Creator of "The Daily Show," champion for women, families, men, humans.
WINSTEAD: Yes. All the parts of the ladies, the brain, the parts.
WAGNER: Lady parts and all. Thank you for your time.
