During a discussion with Governor Phil Bryant (R-MS) about his state’s new, extreme anti-abortion bill, host Steve Doocy promoted the bogus and dangerous Fox News lie that Democrats support “infanticide.”
Wednesday morning, Steve Doocy (who thinks Walgreens offers pap smears) spoke with Bryant who is just pleased as punch about the new “heartbeat bill,” making its way to his desk, which would, effectively ban abortion after six weeks. In some cases, that's before a woman knows she is pregnant. The life of the mother is the only exception - none for rape, incest, medically compromised fetuses, or a woman’s health.
Fetal heartbeat laws passed in other states have been blocked by court decisions, but that hasn’t stopped Mississippi which, last year, spent taxpayer dollars defending a 15-week abortion ban that was struck down.
Doocy, who wants Cardinal Timothy Dolan to excommunicate New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo over that state’s late-abortion law, reported on the Mississippi legislation “aimed at banning abortion at the time a baby’s heartbeat is detected.”
After noting the failure of Mississippi’s 2018 law, Doocy was all smiles as he introduced Bryant.
The governor advanced the anti-abortion trope that “science” informs us, "A heartbeat is the beginning of life." and “You can’t destroy that life, you can’t take that life in the womb.”
Doocy misrepresented other states’ laws, such as Virginia’s which, he misleadingly claimed is “proposing, essentially, a day of birth abortion, for that to be legal.” Doocy also cited New York’s recent law in which late-term abortions are permitted for the life and health of the mother). He asked Bryant, “What are these lawmakers trying to do?”
Bryant preached the anti-abortion talking points. He accused Democrats of trying “to grow the culture of death, if you will. They want to be able to say we can take the life of a child at any time, moments before the birth of that child, even as we heard some elected officials talk about after that child was born, making it comfortable, and then taking their lives.”
Doocy: “Yeah”
(FACT CHECK – Bryant was likely referring to remarks by Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam. But Northam was talking about decisions parents make when a medically compromised baby is born.)
Doocy nodded and murmured in agreement as Bryant kept on preaching: “This has shocked the senses of this nation. It has shone a light on exactly what the end game would be, to be able to have infanticide, if you will, across this nation upon just the demand of someone who wants to take the life of a child and we think that this, in their strange way, they are going to help our movement by shocking people into realizing just how horrific this movement has become, taking the life of a child moments before it is born, viability, having a heartbeat. It is truly shocking and we’re going to try to stop it in Mississippi and other states around the nation.”
(FACT CHECK – according to real scientists, fetal viability begins at 24 weeks.)
Bryant mentioned other Republican-led states advancing the anti-abortion “movement” and expressed pride that Mississippi is part of it.
Nobody mentioned the “heartbeat bills”, including a recent one in Iowa, that were struck down.
Bryant nevertheless said, “Science is on our side.” He said sonograms show development of fetuses who are, according to Bryant, human beings with “rights that are bestowed up them.”
Bryan even worked in an anti-immigrant plug while he was there. He complained, “We talk about rights for people that are not even citizens of this United States. We want to be able to give them every right that is afforded to a citizen of the United States. But that child within the womb, we’re gonna take all their rights to live away.”
Actually, anti-abortion bills, like the “heartbeat bills,” take away women’s rights. But in the (white, Christian) man’s world of Fox News, who cares about that?
Fox News – Gilead’s Newsroom?!
Watch the deception above, from the February 21, 2019 Fox & Friends.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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