Texas Rep. Chip Roy, who fell out of Donald Trump's favor for voting against overturning the 2020 election, can't seem to do anything right for anybody. No longer aboard the Trump train, it seems Roy has only doubled down on GOP fear-mongering when it comes to denying birthing people reproductive health care. This isn’t necessarily new for Roy: Since seeking office in 2018, he’s billed himself as a firmly pro-life candidate. Yet Roy has clearly failed to educate himself on reproductive health topics. Roy’s old campaign website claimed life begins at conception—a bold claim considering there is no definitive answer within the scientific community.
He also believes that abortions at 20 weeks somehow constitute dismemberment, which is about as unscientific and ignorant as you can get on the topic. “The procedure for an abortion, when we’re talking about 20 weeks as I understand it is dilation and extraction,” Roy said while questioning Dr. Yashica Robinson Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion access. The procedure known as D&X is an incredibly rare one when it comes to abortion and the term really only took off as a means of using scare tactic language for those on the pro-life side. Not content to correct or educate himself on the matter or even who he was speaking to, Roy spoke over and addressed Dr. Robinson as Mrs. Robinson.
Dr. Robinson isn’t someone new to this discussion and may very well have had to endure Roy’s badgering in the past. An OB-GYN in the state of Alabama, she’s previously testified before lawmakers and is not only an expert in her field but serves on the board of directors of Physicians for Reproductive Health and is the medical director of Alabama Women’s Center, according to the ACLU. Roy didn’t really do his homework on her or really anything pertaining to the hearing, as you can see in these clips.
Campaign Action
The Republican representative gets all worked up over baseless conspiracy theories meant to demonize abortion providers like Dr. Robinson and organizations like Planned Parenthood with lies about “storing baby parts.” Dr. Robinson, in the few times she was able to speak without Roy talking over her, firmly put those theories to rest. “I have never seen that in a health care setting, ever. We don’t put baby parts in freezers or Pyrex dishes,” Dr. Robinson said.
It’s worth noting that the abortions Roy is woefully misconstruing as some type of medieval torture are considered surgeries, and thus the utmost attention to cleanliness is adhered to in that setting. Any legitimate facility that wants to continue to provide services for patients wouldn’t so much as enter the room in which a doctor is performing a surgical procedure without scrubbing up. So why would they mishandle medical waste, put their patients at risk of infection or worse, and potentially compromise their ability to operate?
Chip Roy has never cared about life, especially not those of his constituents who may ever become pregnant. Because of ignorant lawmakers like him, those who live in some of the cities he represent now have fewer options to safely seek reproductive care, arguably putting them at life-threatening risk. This is not what respecting human life looks like—though if anyone can emerge from a House hearing looking more out of their depth than when they came in, it’s Rep. Roy.
