Alabama Rep. John Rogers (D), sparked outrage after his colleagues passed the Human Life Protection Act—a draconian bill that would criminalize abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
Voicing his support for a woman’s right to choose, Rogers said that women’s bodies should not be legislated.
“I’m not about to be the male telling a woman what to do with her body,” Rogers said. “She has a right to make that decision herself.”
“Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or kill them later,” he said. “You bring them into the world unwanted, unloved, then you send them to the electric chair. So you kill them now or you kill them later. But the bottom line is that I think we shouldn’t be making this decision.”
Rogers seemed to be referring to the hypocrisy of Republicans—and their conservative Dixiecratic counterparts—who are pro-birth, but couldn’t care less about children living in occupied communities. Children who are victims of poverty, police violence, houselessness, mass incarceration, and disparate sentencing. But Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr., still called Rogers words “chilling” and “stomach curling.”
“Every Democrat running for President needs to be asked where they stand on this. The extreme turn we’ve seen from Dems on abortion recently is truly sickening,” Trump Jr. said.
This is stomach curling and makes Ralph Northam look like a moderate on abortion.
Every Democrat running for President needs to be asked where they stand on this. The extreme turn we've seen from Dems on abortion recently is truly sickening. https://t.co/KchZfqvQMK
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 1, 2019
And that’s when things took a hard, left turn.
Rogers said the president’s namesake is evidence that he’s “right to make a scene about abortion.”
“Him being born, that’s proof right there,” Rogers said to a local news affiliate. “That’s a very, very good defense I have for abortion. His mother should have aborted him when he was born and he wouldn’t have made that stupid statement.”
No argument, so far; but then Rogers took a detour into ableism and perpetuated stigmas around mental health, neurodivergency, and physical disabilities in an extremely callous way.
“He’s evidently retarded, crazy. Donald Trump’s son, I know there’s something wrong with that boy,” Rogers added.
"He's evidently retarded or crazy."
Alabama lawmaker responds to @DonaldJTrumpJr's reaction to abortion commentshttps://t.co/EPvaOJ64rK pic.twitter.com/RqbQdNqZ2c
— WVTM 13 (@WVTM13) May 2, 2019
People with any form of disability, anywhere on the spectrum, should be appalled that Rogers would disrespect these communities by saying Trump Jr. is among them, but that’s not why Andy Surabian, spokesperson for Trump Jr., called Rogers comments “vile.”
”Sadly, vile comments like this have become par for the course for the Democrat Party. They’ve become so deranged by President Trump’s victory that celebrating late-term abortion, support for eugenics and even calling for the death of political opponents is becoming their standard operating procedure. I hope every elected Democrat in the country has the common decency and moral courage to disavow these types of grotesque statements from members of their party,” Surabian told Newsweek.com.
Sen. Doug Jones tweeted that Rogers’ rhetoric “gets more appalling each time he speaks.”
The rhetoric of Rep. John Rogers gets more appalling each time he speaks. He does not speak for the people of Alabama and is in fact offending all Alabamians with his crude and reprehensible comments. https://t.co/ZLI8e83Z2d
— Doug Jones (@DougJones) May 2, 2019
“He does not speak for the people of Alabama and is in fact offending all Alabamians with his crude and reprehensible comments,” he added.
Read more at Newsweek.com.
