Rick Perry prays that you take him at his word and not his record (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Yesterday, in a last gasp of desperation to remain relevant as the Iowa caucuses approach, Rick Perry decided to make some news for himself. And the media
dutifully complied:
In what the Texas governor calls a "transformation," Rick Perry on Tuesday said that he has reversed his acceptance of abortion in some severe circumstances, saying that he now opposes the procedure even in cases of rape and incest.
This "transformation" was announced at Tuesday's Presidential Pro-Life Forum, sponsored by Personhood USA and several other evangelical organizations. This was the second "pro-life" forum in as many weeks because apparently, the Republican presidential candidates needed yet another opportunity to boast of their "pro-life" credentials.
At last night's event, Perry dropped his "transformation" bombshell in response to a question from Joshua Verwers, a pastor at Full Faith Christian Center, who apparently was confused by just how pro-lifey Rick Perry really is. Because the half-dozen aggressively anti-choice bills Perry has signed into law as governor weren't evidence enough. And his brazen attempts to cut off all funding for Planned Parenthood weren't clear enough. And his constant rhetoric about how life is precious (you know, except for the lives of the hundreds of prisoners Perry has executed) wasn't persuasive enough.
So Rick Perry decided to up his extremism by telling the audience, "You're seeing a transformation." And the media—from the lefty blogosphere to the New York Times—recorded Perry's declaration verbatim and promptly published the headlines that Perry had "transformed" on abortion.
Just one teeny, tiny little problem with that: it's bullshit. Perry has always been a woman-hating, anti-choice extremist. Upping his anti-choice rhetoric isn't a transformation; it's a redundancy.
For years, Perry has attempted to cloak his extremism with the thin veil of the "rape and incest" exception. It's a convenient gimmick for even the most anti-choice extremists; by saying that they oppose abortion in all cases except, it allows them to pretend to possess an eighth of an iota of compassion for women. But look beyond the rhetoric, and you'll typically find that there's nothing to it. You won't find these "exception" anti-choicers fighting against anti-choice laws. You won't see them fighting to protect rape victims. You won't see them working to ensure that at least those women have safe and affordable access to reproductive health care. No, all you'll find, if you look beyond the rhetoric, is a stringent anti-choice agenda that is indistinguishable from the agenda of the "no exceptions" anti-choicers.
And Rick Perry is no different.
Take, for example, the "emergency" anti-abortion bill Perry fast-tracked earlier this year:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has suggested to pro life activists that a bill in the Texas Legislature requiring women seeking abortions to have a sonogram taken of their fetus will be placed on the emergency fast track for passage.
That bill required all women seeking abortions to first undergo a completely unnecessary sonogram, during which time, doctors were required to provide medically inaccurate descriptions of the fetus. The bill also required women to certify in writing that they understood they were required by law to listen to an explanation of the sonogram, and if they refused to do so, they had to sign a form stating that they are a minor, a victim of sexual assault or incest, or that their fetus "has an irreversible medical condition or abnormality."
That would be the rape or incest exception to the aggressively anti-choice law. You know, for those women for whom Rick Perry, up until his big "transformation," has supposedly had such compassion. But that exception? The one that is so offensive to the Personhood anti-choicers who were concerned that Perry was not sufficiently anti-choice?
Well, the District Court ruled that part of the law was particularly burdensome for rape and incest victims:
The Court need not belabor the obvious by explaining why, for instance, women who are pregnant as a result of sexual assault or incest may not wish to certify that fact in writing, particularly if they are too afraid of retaliation to even report the matter to police. There is no sufficiently powerful government interest to justify compelling speech of this sort, nor is the Act sufficiently tailored to advance such an interest.
And that should be all the evidence anyone needs to know that Perry's former "rape and incest exception" was nothing but a rhetorical trick that had no impact whatsoever on his actual decisions.
Rick Perry has never refused to sign an anti-abortion bill unless it contains such exceptions. He has never fought to expand rights and protections for rape and incest victims. In signing the various anti-choice pledges he and other Republican presidential candidates have signed, he has never added an asterisk and an "except for rape and incest victims" clause. And when Perry has touted, on several occasions, his support for a Constitutional amendment banning all abortion, he has never insisted that such amendment include any exceptions. For example:
[Perry's] spokeswoman, Katherine Cesinger, said by e-mail today: “Gov. Perry is proudly pro-life and successfully championed strong pro-life legislation in Texas including parental consent, this year’s sonogram bill and a budget that significantly defunds abortions in Texas. The governor has long supported overturning Roe v. Wade, and would support amending the U.S. Constitution, with the backing of Congress and the states, to protect innocent life.”
Notice what's missing from his spokeswoman's statement, made earlier this year, before Perry's big "transformation"? Yeah, that would be the "rape and incest" exception Perry supposedly supported up until he watched Mike Huckabee's movie about how awesome it is to force women who've been raped to carry their rapists' babies to term.
It's one thing for Rick Perry to attempt to garner some media attention by pretending his position has changed. His long record of his extremist anti-choice agenda makes clear just how absurd such a claim is.
But it's another thing for the media to play along, to report that Perry's anti-woman agenda of last week is somehow different from his anti-woman agenda of today. It isn't. Perry has been one of the worst governors in the country on issues of women's reproductive rights, despite whatever rhetorical leeway he previously granted himself. And that's the story the media should have reported.