Guest Opinion: Stop letting Fitzpatick fudge on women’s reproductive rights
I cannot sit silent as Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick assures the newspaper, and the people of Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District, that he is somehow “bipartisan” and “compassionate” on women’s reproductive rights.
My mother was president of Planned Parenthood of Bucks County, and my father too (a lifelong Republican), and I can hear them begging me to expose this nonsense.
Fitzpatrick has voted twice against codifying women’s rights as guaranteed for the past half century by Roe v. Wade, both before and after it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Emily's List singles him out as one of 27 Republicans most "unyielding" in their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood (which of course provides many women's health services other than abortion, like cancer screening). He champions those pretending to offer abortion counseling in “crisis pregnancy centers” whose real mission is to proselytize pregnant women against abortion. Trump as President personally thanked him for his opposition to abortion (on video).
He told the newspaper that his absolute favorite anti-abortion bill is HR 36 in the 115th Congress, the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act." It would have criminalized abortion after 20 weeks (in an effort to duck Roe v. Wade’s “age of viability” standard, which had not yet been thrown out by the Supreme Court). An "unborn child" would exist from the moment of fertilization.
He praises this bill as "bipartisan" — even though only two of the 182 House cosponsors were Democrats, neither of them still in office. Cosponsors still in office include Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan. If he says the Senate version was bipartisan too, that’s incorrect. Its sponsors were all Republican, none Democratic.
Fitzpatrick says the bill shows “empathy and compassion,” and “respects a woman’s privacy and autonomy.”
This is absolute rubbish. You can’t play both sides of the abortion issue. If you believe that for virtually the entire nine months of pregnancy, an “unborn child” exists within the woman’s uterus, then you are cancelling the woman’s “privacy and autonomy.” You, the politician, are telling that woman that abortion is murder, even if her doctor determines that the child will be fatally malformed and incapable of survival after birth. You are telling her that a miscarriage resulting from vigorous exercise may be investigated as manslaughter.
You are telling her that she’s a second-class citizen, while the rights of every man in America, right down to Hershel Walker, are undiminished. Never mind that 83% of Pennsylvanians support women’s reproductive rights.
Here’s the bizarre thing. Though the bill was introduced more than five years ago, when Fitzpatrick was a brand new Member, and he now says he loves it, he was not among the hundreds of Republicans who cosponsored it, and it has never been introduced since, by him or anybody. Praising this long-dead bill is empty ducking of actual legislative responsibility.
Nobody should mistake this for moderation. This man is pure anti-abortion, anti-Roe v. Wade, anti-women’s reproductive rights, anti-Planned Parenthood, pro-criminalization, and unwilling to use his legislative power to prevent states from enacting the most draconian possible anti-abortion laws, with no exceptions for anything.
Maybe he thinks it’s O.K. because a girl or woman can just go to another state or country to get an abortion (in fact, he voted to allow such travel — which seems kind of hypocritical if you believe that life begins at fertilization. How is murdering an innocent “unborn child” O.K. if it’s done in another state?). But this reveals the fundamental discrimination and unfairness of the post-Roe reality that Fitzpatrick supports: only low-income women will have their rights taken away — women who can’t afford the money or time to travel to another jurisdiction that respects their rights.
The only thing worse than Fitzpatrick’s cold-hearted dismissal of a half-century of women’s constitutional rights is his cowardice in not owning it. For anyone who values what Fitzpatrick calls “women’s privacy and autonomy,” the only possible vote is for his Democratic opponent, Ashley Ehasz, who promises to always protect women’s reproductive rights, and has the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, and would surely have my parents’ vote if they were still around to cast it.
Scott Wallace, an attorney and resident of Doylestown, was the 2018 Democratic nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s first congressional district.
This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Guest Opinion: Don't let Brian Fitzpatick fudge on reproductive rights
