Being Not Donald Trump is going a long way to making Mike Pence look sane and sober this year, but there’s a reason Trump chose Pence and Pence accepted the offer. He’s an extremist himself, even if he’s better than Trump at difficult things like not attacking a former Miss Universe over what she weighed in 1996 or hinting at the assassination of his political opponents. Pence, as a video from Planned Parenthood (watch below) makes clear, was the early leader of the campaign to defund Planned Parenthood. That’s part of a long, ugly record of trying to pass laws to control women’s bodies:
- Repeatedly voted for the Federal Abortion Ban, a law that criminalizes some abortion services, with no exception to protect a woman’s health, and carries up to a two-year prison sentence for doctors.
- Voted in favor of a bill that would criminalize a doctor for the reasons a woman seeks abortion care. [...]
- Repeatedly cosponsored legislation that would, if it went into effect, make abortion illegal nationwide in almost all cases and ban some of the most common forms of contraception, stem-cell research, and in vitro fertilization. [...]
- Repeatedly voted to allow hospitals to refuse to provide emergency abortion care, even when a woman’s life is in danger.
As governor of Indiana, he signed a law that would force women to carry non-viable pregnancies to term. His Department of Health awarded a $3.5 million contract to a deceitful “pregnancy crisis center” to lie to pregnant women about their options. Scott County, Indiana, saw a major HIV outbreak on his watch, one that came after Pence forced its Planned Parenthood to close—a facility that didn’t provide abortion but did provide HIV testing—and his response to the crisis was sorely inadequate.
Pence’s awful record isn’t limited to abortion, either. He has stood out as an anti-LGBT governor, notoriously signing a right-to-discriminate law that drew nationwide attention, and he supports North Carolina's right to discriminate. He was also staunchly opposed to repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He got upset when the Republican National Convention had an HIV-positive woman speak in 1996.
But there’s more! He refused to call white supremacist leader David Duke “deplorable.” He wants to be like Dick Cheney. He refused to pardon a wrongfully convicted man. Pence may keep a better lid on it. He may not talk about it in the same headline-grabbing ways. But he has compiled a record of ugly votes that would make Donald Trump proud.
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