Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Is a New Cause for Hypocritical Republicans

A rather unexpected attendee showed up at a July 14 Free Britney rally in Los Angeles: Republican Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz, a man who is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly sex trafficking a minor and then attempting to obstruct justice in that ongoing investigation, seemed, well, out of place at a rally organized to support a woman who has personally equated her abusive conservatorship to the same crime for which Gaetz is under investigation.

“The only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking,” Spears said of her conservatorship during recent testimony, according to a court transcript.

Gaetz, the ultimate womanizer, really tried to front when he addressed the crowd of supporters at the rally. When given the mic (why?) he spoke of “grifters in this process that tried to act like they spoke for Britney, that they knew what she wanted," according to SFGATE.

One of the people accused of trying to act like they spoke for Spears is her father, Jamie, who is said to receive $16,000 per month in his role as her conservator. But Gaetz and others in the Republican Party also appear to be trying to take advantage of Spears’s awful situation for their own benefit. As Spears’s case and the Free Britney movement gained traction in the mainstream media this summer, Republicans have attempted to co-opt the #FreeBritney movement in order to pander to Britney fans (a constituency historically composed of demographics of the electorate that the GOP struggles to attract: young people, LGBTQ+ people, women, and people of color). As part of this effort, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), urged #FreeBritney supporters to share their cell numbers and emails so they could receive regular dispatches from the NRCC.

The committee’s agenda, as well as the personal legislative records of Gaetz, NRCC Chair Tom Emmer, and other Republicans who have glommed on to the Free Britney movement, could not be more at odds with Spears’s plight, nor the confluence of women’s and reproductive rights issues that her conservatorship represents. But this glaring disconnect hasn’t stopped the party from taking further advantage of Spears’s situation, leveraging the public interest in the conservatorship scandal as a means to further their own agenda. It’s hypocritical, yes, but hardly surprising.

While disingenuously operating behind the guise of the Free Britney movement, Republicans are actually staying quite true to their party’s modus operandi: denying women everywhere their bodily and sexual autonomy, while using individual, bombastic pawns to distract from an agenda that seeks to disadvantage everyday women at every turn.

Beyond the issues of alleged conservatorship abuse raised by Spears’s case — a reality for many that is widespread and pervasive — testimony from the singer at her June 23 hearing also brought up issues of disability rights, reproductive rights, and the reality of true reproductive freedom as a disability rights issue.

“I was told right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby,” Spears testified, according to the court transcript. “I have an (IUD) inside of myself right now so I don’t get pregnant. I wanted to take the (IUD) out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children — any more children.”

At this moment, Republican-led state legislatures are making a concerted effort to pass the most restrictive abortion laws possible — part of a decades-long effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Some of these lawmakers are erroneously conflating birth control with abortion, not only to make it illegal to end an unplanned pregnancy but also nearly impossible to prevent one in the first place. And while Spears is seeking a future that would give her the choice to get pregnant, it’s choice that she’s ultimately after. A choice which the party now grandstanding on the stage of her trauma is actively trying to take away from women everywhere.

The hypocrisy of Gaetz getting behind the Free Britney movement is particularly needling given his legislative record and the misconduct allegations he’s currently facing. The New York Times reported in March that federal investigators are looking into whether the now-39-year-old congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old two years ago and paid for her to travel with him. Gaetz has denied all allegations, including paying for sex or having sex with a minor, describing some of the claims as his suspicion that someone is “trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.”

And the Florida lawmaker is a staunch opponent of reproductive rights. In 2019, he co-sponsored a federal version of the so-called fetal heartbeat bill, which would ban most abortions before many women even know they are pregnant. When Gaetz invited Spears to testify before Congress about her conservatorship battle, he did so in cahoots with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, all of whom have similarly deplorable track records on issues of reproductive rights, as well as LGBTQ+ rights. None of them voted in favor of the Equality Act, which would provide explicit federal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Spears, a pop icon revered by the gay community, supports the legislation.

So the NRCC using #FreeBritney messaging in hopes of building up their mailing lists rings rather hollow. After all, Emmer, the NRCC chair, once changed a bill’s language in order to explicitly ban gay and lesbian couples from using a surrogate mother and also voted against allowing public school students to learn about age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education. Earlier this year, he touted his A+ rating from anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List.

The GOP’s track record on reproductive, LGBTQ+, and disability rights speaks for itself. Republican lawmakers may be calling for an end to Spears’s conservatorship, but it doesn’t appear to be because they see Spears as an autonomous person entitled to her own rights and happiness, regardless of her mental state. Wealth and celebrity aside, she’s only a woman in America, after all.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: The Matt Gaetz Scandal Speaks to the Casual Misogyny in Many Workplaces

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue