Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy on Wednesday compared abortion to slavery, claiming: “This is not the first time in American history where one group of powerful people are deciding who is sufficiently human enough so they can do whatever they want with them.”
“These 2020 candidates aren’t just saying you know, rape and incest and exceptions and even first trimester, which pro-lifers like me don’t even agree with, but a lot of American population does,” said Campos-Duffy, during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “They’re saying abortion unfettered, unregulated all the way through the third trimester and even after birth.”
To be clear, there are no Democrats seeking to legalize infanticide. Only 1.3 percent of abortions take place after 21 weeks, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and those cases largely involve conditions that endanger the mother or involve severe fetal anomalies. Most states already limit abortion to under 24 weeks.
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But those facts didn’t keep Campos-Duffy, a 1994 cast member on MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco, from expanding on her slavery metaphor.
“Back in those days they focused on property rights and state rights and they talked about rights,” she continued. “And they didn’t talk about the humanity of the people that were affected by those laws. So this is a place where pro-lifers feel very strong. They feel like they’re on a very high scientific and moral ground. They feel like they’re the abolitionists of our day. And they feel like science in particular is backing them up and moving momentum on their side.”
In a Florida campaign rally earlier this month, President Trump made similar allegations, claiming that “Democrats are aggressively pushing late-term abortion, allowing for children to be ripped from their mother’s womb right up until the moment of birth.”
Various 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have condemned such anti-choice rhetoric, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who called Trump’s language “reckless.” Meanwhile, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said the president’s assertions are “100 percent false.”
“There is zero place for politicians to be involved in these very personal and complex medical decisions, and they should only be made between a woman, her family and her doctor—period, full stop,” she added.
In recent weeks, lawmakers in Georgia, Missouri, and Alabama have passed some of the most expansive restrictions on abortions in decades.
Hundreds of of demonstrators have rallied in cities like Montgomery and Manhattan to protest Alabama’s new ban—the strictest in the nation—which would make any abortion performed after six weeks of gestation a felony, with no exception for rape or incest.
Rachel Campos-Duffy and fellow Real World alum, Congressman Sean Duffy (R-WI), are expecting their ninth child this fall.
