The Cleveland Plain-Dealer's Jeff Darcy did some mansplaining via a cartoon in Saturday's edition, not only completely misrepresenting Wendy Davis and her position on abortion in general, but also stating in an accompanying editorial that her shoes are "blood-red pink" and claiming that she's an "advocate" of late-term abortions, stated in a way that would insinuate that she is actually pro-abortion.
It's hard to know which is more pathetic -- that the cartoon so misrepresents the motives and words of Texas Senator Wendy Davis, or that Darcy himself appears to be woefully unaware that there are still health risks to the mother and the child that can be discovered after 20 weeks. The frustratingly ignorant crux of his argument completely belies the reality that the majority of abortions after 20 weeks are ending wanted pregnancies and are performed specifically because of concerns for the safety of the mother, or because the child has been determined to have what will be a terminal condition, if it even survives to term. No, as far as Darcy is concerned, Wendy Davis is some late-term abortion fetishist that wants to make Texas a haven for baby killers. His language gives no room for even the suggestion of an understanding that there might actually be medically viable reasons for an abortion after 20 weeks.
Indeed, in Darcy's state of Ohio, doctors have come forward to speak out against the passage of the anti-abortion bill HB200 there for similar reasons. HB200 would "require doctors to instruct patients on the fetal nervous system's ability to detect pain, and tell women there is a causal link between having an abortion and developing breast cancer," even though neither of those are scientifically proven. One of the Ohio doctors who testified against HB200, Jason Mellilo, addressed the dangers of these sorts of laws for physicians on the KCRW radio show To The Point, stating that, "if they don't do something medically indicated they could be held civilly liable by the patient for not following the standard of care. But if they do it, then they could be held criminally liable" by the state.
If this were a reasoned, well thought out argument in favor of the anti-abortion stance, it would be at least respectable. But Jeff Darcy has not only stooped to the level of presenting a fairly fact-free editorial and cartoon, but he uses vile and emotional language to do so while also completely misrepresenting Wendy Davis, showing a complete lack of even basic scientific awareness of the considerations that must be taken into account, and (for what it's worth) making a mockery of punctuation and grammar in the column.
But it is easy to be pro-life when you don't have a womb and you are apparently blind to the women whose lives might be threatened, or even the currently living children that could also do with so much concern.