DNC Chair: Criminalizing Non-consensual Abortion Limits Reproductive Rights

Imagine a man successfully terminating the pregnancy of a woman he impregnated by giving her an abortion pill disguised as an antibiotic. That horrific scenario played out in the state of Florida last year when John Andrew Welden forged a prescription for misoprostol, relabeled it as amoxicillin, and convinced his then girlfriend that she had an infection and needed to take the antibiotic. Within hours, she miscarried.

The girlfriend, Remee Joe Lee, desperately wanted her child. Only six weeks pregnant at the time, she had already picked out a name for her baby.

When Welden's role was discovered, and criminal ramifications were pursued, it was found that because of an oversight in Florida law, he could not be charged with harming the unborn baby. The best prosecutors could charge him with was violation of the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act because he broke federal laws against product tampering.

State legislators sought to fix the legal loophole this year when they passed the Offenses Against Unborn Children Act which Lee and her family threw their support behind. The bill treats a crime that harms an unborn child separately from any damage caused to the unborn child's mother.

One would think that there would be bipartisan support behind preventing another John Andrew Welden from forcing an unwanted abortion on an unsuspecting woman, but according to Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, such an initiative is "senseless", "wrong", and a waste of taxpayers time and money.

No, I'm not joking.

Speaking to WFSU in Tallahassee, the Florida Congresswoman offered her thoughts on the Offenses Against Unborn Children Act and another abortion-related bill that passed the legislature.

"Florida Republican lawmakers have wasted taxpayers time and money by passing these extreme bills that further limit women’s reproductive rights," said Wasserman Schultz. "It is senseless and it's wrong."

So let me get this straight... It limits a woman's reproductive rights to criminalize the infliction of an unwanted miscarriage inside that woman's body? And turning such an reprehensible act into a crime is senseless, wrong, and a waste of time and money?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made a plethora of breathtakingly shameful remarks throughout her political career, but this one really takes the cake. The commitment this woman has to abortion apparently rises to the level of Stanley Kubrick-style perversity. Is the pro-choice decision no longer between a woman and her physician, but instead left up to a man who tricks a woman into taking an abortion pill?

Now, I'm sure that if the media pressed Wasserman Schultz on her comments (don't count on that happening), she would try to qualify them by voicing concerns about precedents and slippery slopes when it comes to abortion-related laws in this country. Maybe she could even articulate some solid, specific reasoning behind her opposition to the bill. But that wouldn't erase what she said, and the explanation certainly wouldn't earn her any kind of pass if she wasn't a Democrat. Can you imagine if a Republican politician, or even a conservative pundit (man or woman), had said something even remotely as offensive and creepy as what Wasserman Schultz said concerning reproduction? Democrats would be screaming from the high heavens about the GOP's "War on Women." A jihad of journalists would be calling on John Boehner to denounce the remarks. Reporters would be swarming around Sandra Fluke for comment. Democratic fundraiser emails, with the controversial quote in the subject line, would have already been sent out. President Obama would be on the phone with Remee Joe Lee, offering her words of comfort.

The blatant double-standard comes from the reality that the only extreme position the mainstream media ever recognizes on the issue of abortion is that of those who are against it. Thus, don't expect the DNC Chair's comments to be reported anywhere but on Fox News and conservative radio. They'll quietly fall by the wayside, just as Barack Obama's support of post-birth abortions did.