Might be time for MSNBC to tighten security at its studios. I'm not sure who was hosting “The Rachel Maddow Show” last night, but it sure as heck could not have been the cable program's namesake. The person certainly looked and sounded like Maddow, no doubt about that, but once you hear what she said, I think you'll agree there's no possible way it was Maddow.
The shocking remarks came during the introduction to a guest, Texas state senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat running for governor. Davis, you'll recall, became a darling on the left for her 11-hour filibuster in June 2013 to prevent Texas state Republicans from outlawing late-term abortions and tightening regulations on abortion clinics. For this she earned the devastating moniker “Abortion Barbie” from RedState founder Erick Ericson. Davis is making the media rounds to tout her memoirs in which she claims to have had two abortions. I'll let Maddow, or whoever that was Tuesday night, take it from here –
“This week Wendy Davis published a book about her life called “Forgetting to be Afraid.” The book is bracingly personal. Senator Davis reveals for the first time that she had had two abortions herself, one because she had an ectopic pregnancy. That's a type of pregnancy that is not only not viable, as a pregnancy it can be very dangerous for a woman who's pregnant under those circumstances." "The second pregnancy she had to end was one in which the baby was diagnosed with a rare brain abnormality.” There you have it – what could be the first time in MSNBC history that one of its liberal pundits described an abortion as having anything to do with a “baby.” More shocking still, Maddow wasn't done – “She and her husband had to make the heartbreaking decision to end that pregnancy, they said, to stop the baby's suffering.”
Were you sitting down for that? Not only did Davis's abortion end the life of a “baby,” according to Maddow, it also stopped the baby's “suffering” – almost as if this were a sentient being we're talking about. By the latter stages of pregnancy, it is. Based on what we've learned from advances in fetal technology over recent decades, brain wave activity can be measured in normally developing unborn infants by the start of the third trimester.
Two common habits of those who deem themselves “pro choice” – an unwillingness to use the word “abortion,” and a more pronounced tendency to euphemize what is aborted – fetus, dependent protoplasm, blob of tissue, product of conception, uterine contents, foreign uterine matter – anything to avoid the dreaded word “baby.”
I'm reminded of an online exchange I once had about this with a liberal acquaintance. A fetus is not a baby, he wrote. Why does the pregnant woman say she felt her baby kick, I asked. He quoted a left-wing nun on the tyranny of men outlawing abortion, as if that answered my question. After I asked him again, he deleted the thread. Anything to avoid “baby.” Perhaps Maddow, or whoever that was last night, decided it's time to ditch the euphemisms, and I take that as a good sign. But I seriously doubt so-called pro-choice liberals like Maddow will ever admit that abortion involves killing that baby.
