Back in March, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), who was raped at age 16 — it is a story she herself shares frequently — was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos how she could support Donald Trump for president, after he has been found liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll case.
“It was not a criminal court case,” Mace shot back, adding, “Number one. Number two, I live with shame. And you’re asking me a question about my political choices trying to shame me as a rape victim.”
The train had already jumped the tracks.
“It’s actually not about shaming you,” Stephanopoulos responded. “It’s a question about Donald Trump.”
Mace, though unprovoked, went ballistic.
“I have dealt with this for 30 years. You know how hard it was to tell my story five years ago when they were doing a fetal-heartbeat bill [in South Carolina to restrict abortion] and there were no exceptions for rape or incest in there. I had to tell my story because no other woman was coming forward for us. No rape victims were represented, and you’re trying to shame me this morning. And I find it offensive, and this is why women won’t come forward.”
Stephanopoulos is not the reason women aren’t coming forward — and Mace knows it.
His research staff didn’t discover Mace’s rape and ambush her with a question about it. She reminds viewers often that, as a survivor, she understands the plight of the abused better than most.
All power to her.
But she is a member of a party that has nominated a sexual predator — she is supporting him herself — and has removed protections, certainly in terms of access to abortions, for those raped and the victims of incest. Why shouldn’t she be asked about her comfort level? Why shouldn’t Nancy Mace, victim of sexual abuse, endorsing Donald Trump, perpetrator of sexual abuse, for president be a suitable topic of conversation?
She is vouching for a man who once bragged about grabbing women by the “pus*y.” She is in a party that doesn’t care.
Maybe that is why women won’t come forward.
A few weeks back, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a law passed in 1864 — the Civil War wasn’t over yet, women couldn’t vote, the medical community still wasn’t universally convinced it was a good idea for doctors to wash their hands before surgery, and it would be 48 years before the place even became a state — that made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one.
Mace said, “Arizona’s 1864 law is a terrible law. I don’t know anybody in my state who would support that kind of thing. And I can’t imagine the majority of Arizonans would support it either. It needs to be repealed immediately.”
Except maybe South Carolina, her state.
Since 2022, South Carolina has banned after six weeks of pregnancy, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legislation, wait for it, removed the exceptions for rape and incest.
Mace’s outrage is not just selective. It’s performance art.
The 1864 bill, as mentioned, as do most of the abysmal pieces of current anti-abortion legislation, only has an exception if the life of the mother is at stake. God knows how that was defined then in the middle of the 19th century. In 2023, a woman in Oklahoma was told to wait in a hospital parking lot because she wasn’t bleeding enough to qualify for that state’s “life-of-the-mother exception.”
Unfortunately, but by design, there’s no consensus on what that means — or when it means it. Does it mean the woman will die if the abortion is not performed? Does it mean she is likely to die? When does “spotting” become “hemorrhaging”? And who decides this? Doctors, hospital administrators, Samuel Alito?
If you make the term ambiguous, fewer abortions will occur. Women will be afraid to ask. Doctors will be afraid to perform them.
That’s today’s GOP.
Here in Oklahoma, Republican State Rep. Justin Humphrey believes pregnant women are hosts. Former Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina said pregnant women are “earthen vessels” and pregnancies are like Polaroids. In Michigan, Republican Robert Regan wondered if rape victims should just “lie back and enjoy it.” Former Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri said women’s bodies have a way of avoiding pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape.”
One party attracts such people — one!
And Mace is a member of that party, a party that would have denied her an abortion — assuming her body didn’t have a supernatural power to avoid it — if her rape had resulted in a pregnancy.
In 2016, MSNBC host Chris Matthews asked Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, what penalties should be imposed on women who get abortions.
“The answer is there has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said, adding that abortion is a “very serious problem.”
He eventually walked back his answer.
He needn’t have bothered.
In 2016, after he made the comments, 41% of women voters went for Trump.
In 2020, after Trump put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court — all three eventually voted to gut Roe v. Wade — 42% of women voters picked him.
Nancy Mace voted for him.
She will again.
The 1864 Arizona decision, like most of the anti-abortion statutes now, doesn’t punish the woman who has the abortion, just the doctors who perform it, the cousins who drive the woman to the abortion clinic, and anyone else who facilitates the procedure. Think about that. So little does the GOP think of women, it won’t even hold them accountable for what goes on in their own bodies.
The condescension is almost as bad as the cruelty.
In Arizona, shortly after its Supreme Court ruled in his favor, State Senator Anthony Kern, an Arizona Republican, who is currently under investigation for trying to serve as a “fake elector” for then-President Donald Trump following the 2020 election, led fellow Republicans in prayer … in tongues … on the senate floor. Later he said, “Looks like our prayer team stirred up some god-haters.”
Nancy Mace belongs to a party that is theocratically dangerous. It’s OK to ask her about it.
Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” is out and the follow-up, “Jack Sh*t, Volume 2: Wait For The Movie. It’s In Color” is expected to be released … soon. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
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