Melissa Harris-Perry always has something shocking to say (or wear – who could forget the time she wore tampon earrings on her show to protest the banning of late-term abortions?). On January 24, she compared an unborn baby (or “fetus” as the term they prefer to use) to a cancerous tumor, or a limb that needed amputation.
The outrageous comments were made during a discussion with Julian McPhilips, a civil rights attorney who “represents the rights of the unborn as a guardian ad litem in Alabama court because of a state law (HB 494) that allows juveniles who don’t have parental permission to petition the court for an abortion.”
Here’s what Harris-Perry had to say:
“But I want to ask one final question though: Are you at all distressed in the ways that I am about the idea that there is a separate interest between an individual and something that is happening in her body that cannot at that moment exist outside of her body? So, the idea, for example, that I would need a court’s permission for cancer treatment or the court’s permission for a surgery that would remove my hand. Like, if it’s my body, I guess I can’t understand why the state would have to give me permission.”
As Dave Andrusko (National Right to Life News) stated:
“At first blush, you might simply say, What?!” But remember this is the same woman who argued that superstar singer Beyonce could [should?] have promoted abortion at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards program where she spoke at length…”
(I’ll add a few more examples that will make people scratch their heads and say “What!?” There was the time where she downplayed the role that radical Islam played shortly after the Boston Bombings. The time she linked GITMO detainees to American slaves. The time she mocked (and then shamefully apologized) Mitt Romney on his newest grandson – who happened to be black. Or the time when she said that parents shouldn’t raise kids, communities should raise kids: “Part of it is, we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”)
McPhilips took Harris-Perry’s irrational comment in stride, and sensibly responded:
“Well, you wouldn’t have to, because I presume you’re well over 17, but someone 17 or younger, especially 16, 15, 14, having an abortion or having a baby could have great consequences. And at their age and stage, they can’t enter into any contract legally in any state anyway, and the rules of civil procedure in Alabama and in most states allow for the appointment of a guardian ad litem to protect the property interests of an unborn child. And we reason if the property interests of an unborn child can be protected, why not the life interests, because without the life, you can’t have property. …
“But I will say this: I want to raise the consciousness of people out there that there’s much at stake, great life itself. The only problem with pro-choice is it’s absolutely no choice for the one life that’s really at stake.”
Melissa Harris-Perry once asked “When does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling – but not science”; and spoke of an unborn child as a “thing” that “might turn into a human.”
Incidentally, Melissa Harris-Perry has a daughter who will be celebrating her first birthday next month. Sort of makes you wonder if she now considers “that thing” a full-fledged human….since, in her mind, the beginning of life is decided upon the parents.
