In the wake of Alabama’s draconian abortion ban, the internet is expectedly alight with takes from both sides of the abortion debate. While we know what the response of the abortion rights crowed is going to be, it’s fascinating to see how the pro-life crowd is reacting to the implementation of a law they’ve always envisioned: the complete criminalization of abortion, putting both doctors and patients in danger of hard prison time.
Matt Walsh is described as one of the religious right’s “most influential young voices” on his bio for Ben Shapiro’s publication The Daily Wire. Admittedly, I’m not that familiar with Walsh’s work, but a tweet he fired off this Wednesday has me wondering how someone with such knee-jerk and ignorant logic gets those kinds of accolades.
First, there was the following Twitter exchange:
Michael Knowles is playing down the horrible fact of the Alabama abortion ban that if a 12 year old girl gets raped by her dad she has to carry the baby. And that the rapist will spend less time in prison than a doctor who aborts the baby. This is immoral.
— PDXfanatic 🌹🇺🇸 (@PDXfanatic) May 15, 2019
Upon seeing the above response to Michael Knowles’ tweet, Walsh completely ignored the question of a rapist receiving less punishment than an abortion doctor, and posited the bizarre claim that an abortion doctor would be destroying “evidence” of a rape if the underage victim’s pregnancy was terminated.
“If a 12 year old is raped by her father and the father takes her to get an abortion, the evidence of the crime will be destroyed and he will go on molesting his victim for years,” Walsh tweeted. “If however the child is born, his crime will be discovered and she will be rescued from the abuse.”
If a 12 year old is raped by her father and the father takes her to get an abortion, the evidence of the crime will be destroyed and he will go on molesting his victim for years. If however the child is born, his crime will be discovered and she will be rescued from the abuse. https://t.co/emV8tJifWE
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 15, 2019
Let’s break this down: According to Walsh, the only way to bring an incestual, pedophile rapist to justice is to force his victim to bring the resulting fetus to full term. Only then, will the “crime be discovered.”
Walsh went on to write that “this exact kind of scenario happens all the time with the help of the fine folks at [Planned Parenthood], who are more than happy to assist an abuser in covering up abuse.” This is an interesting take, considering that he’s responding to an initial tweet that claims pregnancies from rape and incest constitute “less than 1% of abortions annually.” Now, Walsh is saying that Planned Parenthood is participating in these alleged rape coverups “all the time.”
Thankfully, someone was able to bring some reality to counter Walsh’s fallacious argument. Responding to his tweet, Erica Joy pointed out that aborted fetuses have been tested in rape cases “since at least 1990,” while linking to a New York Times article citing such a case.
It’s almost as if Walsh never heard of DNA before. Maybe they don’t believe that stuff like that in far-right Catholic circles.
As the Friendly Atheist‘s Sarahbeth Caplin points out, it’s hard to know where to begin when it comes to refuting Walsh’s logic, but let’s start with the obvious:
12-year-olds can’t legally consent to sex. That means a pregnant 12-year-old is herself evidence of rape.
This isn’t hard.
Featured image: screen grab/The Daily Wire
