Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on Friday argued Republicans were motivated to enact pro-life legislation by their racism and Christian bigotry.
The Democratic socialist asserted Republicans must not be sincere in their desire to protect children because they do not support her Green New Deal and therefore want to create "hell on Earth." She questioned the motives of legislators who support abortion bans, such as the one just passed in Alabama.
"To the GOP extremists trying to invoke ‘the unborn’ to jail people for abortion: Where are you on climate change? OH right, you want to burn fossil fuels til there’s hell on Earth," she tweeted. "If they were truthful about their motives, they’d be consistent in their principles. They’re not."
To the GOP extremists trying to invoke 'the unborn" to jail people for abortion:
Where are you on climate change? OH right, you want to burn fossil fuels til there’s hell on Earth.
If they were truthful about their motives, they’d be consistent in their principles. They’re not.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 17, 2019
She added that she wouldn’t be angry about the GOP’s desire to destroy the world if they were just honest about it.
"What angers me about the GOP’s attempts to turn the United States into a far-right Christian theocracy is how dishonest they are about it," she said. "At least be forthright about your desire to subvert and dismantle our democracy into a creepy theological order led by a mad king."
Ultimately her point was that Republicans cannot claim to care about nonwhite children unless they supported a suite of progressive policies championed by Ocasio-Cortez herself.
The GOP doesn’t care about babies at all - especially brown, black, or poor ones. If they did, they’d:
- cosponsor the Green New Deal or at LEAST have a real climate plan
- guarantee healthcare so ALL can get prenatal care
- not stand for the death+caging of babies on our border— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 17, 2019
Abortion bills in states such as Alabama, Missouri, and Georgia have dominated media coverage in recent days. Most of those bills have restricted abortion from the point where a heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around six to eight weeks. Some pro-life politicians and activists have said they want to test Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion, at the Supreme Court.
Many liberals have expressed fear about the same thing, especially in recent months since Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. States such as a New York have passed sweeping legislation legally protecting almost all abortion procedures in an attempt to codify Roe at the state level in case it’s overturned.
Before these bills challenged the supremacy of Roe, the debate around abortion was focused on late-term procedures and infanticide, which entered the news after a controversial bill went down in Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam (D.) endorsed the bill, proposed by Del. Kathy Tran (D.) in the state house, and made comments seeming to endorse infanticide in the case of a botched abortion. Tran backtracked on the bill but Northam did not, leading Republicans in the U.S. Congress to push for protecting babies born alive in the kinds of cases Northam addressed. Democrats blocked the GOP’s bill.