Conservative Twitter lit up Tuesday when Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) popped off on Morning Joe that J.D. Vance has no empathy for women getting abortions after being raped, and we should ”make him go through this.” Vance tweeted over the video that Beshear was a “disgusting person.”
Beshear was lecturing on MSNBC that abortion policy is “just so extreme” in states like his, without exceptions for rape, incest, and “non-viable pregnancies.”
Mika Brzezinski shot back: “Then on the right, governor, you have -- you have Republican candidates and Republicans talking about babies being aborted at nine months. Can you even make sense of their argument?” He replied: “Half of it is not even true. It's just fear tactics. And it's just lying to people.”
BESHEAR: I mean, think about what some people have had to go through because of these laws. I mean, J.D. Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape inconvenient. Like inconvenient is traffic. I mean it is -- make him go through this. I mean -- someone being violated, someone being harmed and then telling them that they don't have options after that. That fails any test of decency, of humanity. But here's the thing. It also shows they don't have any empathy at all. A president and vice president has to have empathy. You have to be able to put yourself in a position you've never been in, to try to understand somebody else.
It’s false that Democrats don’t support abortion at any time? The 2020 platform was clear they opposed all restrictions. “Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights.”
The new 2024 platform is more dodgy: “President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are committed to restoring the reproductive rights Trump ripped away. With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again.” But what does that mean?
Journalists should absorb the text of the "Women's Health Protection Act" of 2021:
It is the purpose of this Act—
(1) to permit health care providers to provide abortion services without limitations or requirements that single out the provision of abortion services
A few hours later, Beshear appeared on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports to clarify that he didn't mean what he said, or doubled down on it, saying Vance was "deflecting."
MITCHELL So what he's saying is that you were somehow suggesting -- he said, "What the hell is this?" Why is Andy Beshear -- he tweeted this out. "Wishing that a member of my family would get raped. A disgusting person." How do you respond to that? Is that what you were talking about?
BESHEAR: Of course. It's ridiculous. But it's also deflection. J.D. Vance knows that he and Donald Trump are so wrong on this issue. And so he's trying to make himself the victim. Listen, Hadley Duvall was a victim. The women that were on the stage last night. The couple that had to go through a non-viable pregnancy are victims. As a man J.D. Vance will never have to face any of this personally. But it's sad that he lacks the empathy to be able to put himself in a different position and to understand why having exceptions, having reproductive freedom is so important in the first place. Obviously, I'd never wish harm on anyone. It just -- again, deflection. Trying to make himself and Donald Trump the victims.
