Mehmet Oz had one line that will resonate in Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate: Abortion is a decision that should be left to “women, doctors, and local political leaders.”
Sit with that one for a minute, preferably while holding in your mind the image of your state senator or maybe your county commissioner. If you’re in Pennsylvania, go right ahead and envision Doug Mastriano.
But also remember: This is what it looks like when a Republican politician tries to pretend he wouldn’t be too extreme on abortion. Oz, who during his primary said that abortion is “still murder” at any stage of pregnancy, from Day One, is now dodging the question of whether, if elected to the Senate, he’d vote for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 15-week federal abortion ban. In Tuesday night’s debate, he insisted that “I am not going to support federal rules that block the ability of states to do what they wish to do,” but he refused to just say no, he would not vote for that bill. That’s where his “women, doctors, and local political leaders” came in—it was another attempt to deflect from what he, Mehmet Oz, would vote for if elected to the U.S. Senate.
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RELATED STORY: John Fetterman summarizes Mehmet Oz's entire existence with a simple phrase
The reality is this:
Testifying to the truth of that, even Lindsey Graham was saying “I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion” just weeks before he introduced a federal abortion ban. Oz wouldn’t just say “no” to voting for that federal ban. So mark him as a yes if Republicans take the Senate and, as Graham promised, there’s a vote on that bill or something even worse.
It is not only about Oz, though in a tight race that could determine control of the Senate, it definitely is about Oz too. What Republicans want—through Graham’s 15-week ban or any of the other abortion bans they have introduced in Congress in the past year or two—is for your local political leaders to be able to institute a harsher abortion ban than whatever Republicans could use control of Congress to jam through, but not to be able to pass stronger laws protecting abortion access. That’s why all the fancy footwork from Oz.
Charles Gaba tweeted a thread of comments from the kind of local political leaders Oz might be envisioning. Comments like, “I’m of the understanding that in many cases of rape it does not involve pregnancy because of the trauma of the incident,” from an Idaho state representative. Or “Obviously rape is awful … what is beautiful is the child that could come from this,” from a West Virginia state delegate. Or a bill stating, “No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent,” filed in 2014 by a Missouri state representative. The list goes on. And on.
Those are the people Oz is putting on equal footing with women and their doctors in making decisions about abortion.
Needless to say this drew a response, although in all honesty, a lot of the response was more or less, “Wait, he really said that? Seriously?”
Hopefully Fetterman’s campaign and about half a dozen outside groups are already cutting ads showing Oz calling for abortion decisions to be made by “a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders.” Maybe with a little visualization of what exactly that could look like, just to drive the point home.
Sign if you agree: A vote for Republicans is a vote to ban abortion.
Abortion rights, climate change, and gun safety are all on the ballot this fall, and there are literally thousands of ways to get involved in turning our voters. Plug into a federal, state, or local campaign from our GOTV feed at Mobilize and help Democrats and progressives win in November.
Today on The Brief, we speak with Way To Win’s co-founder and vice president, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona. Ancona comes in to discuss how grassroots progressive groups are spending money in the hopes of getting as many voters out for the midterm elections. She also talks about what campaign advertisements are effective and which are not. One thing is for sure, though: We are living in historic times, and what that means for these midterms cannot be easily predicted—so Get Out The Vote!
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