I don't want this story to get lost in the crush of other (and more important) stories that broke this weekend: Erick Erickson—founder of RedState.com, paid talking head on CNN, huge fucking asshole—posted this to his Twitter feed early Saturday morning. The link goes to a page where you can order coat hangers. Because women are going to need coat hangers now, you see, since safe and legal abortions are going to be much harder to get in Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio—basically anywhere the GOP is in charge. (And birth control too; they're also making that harder to get.)
I argued on the "Savage Lovecast" last week that anti-choice Republican governors, legislators, activists and fucksticks like Erickson want women who are seeking abortions to die. It's win-win for anti-choicers, just like LGBT youth suicide is a win-win for anti-gay rightwing Christian bigots. The Family Research Council points to LGBT youth suicide rates to "prove" that the "gay lifestyle" is dangerous and unhealthy while doing all it can to drive up LGBT youth suicide rates (encouraging parents to reject their gay kids, pushing "reparative therapy" programs, opposing GSAs, etc.). Likewise, anti-choice governors, legislators, and activists are pushing through laws in GOP-dominated states that make legal and safe abortions harder to get and when women inevitably die as the result of illegal and unsafe abortions—some performed with coat hangers—anti-choice pols and activists will point to those deaths to justify the anti-choice legislation that lead to those deaths. They'll demand more restrictions. They'll argue that these deaths prove that abortion must be banned.
Just like every dead gay kid is a win for the Family Research Council, every dead woman is a victory for Rick Perry and John Kasich and Scott Walker.
It's rare to see an anti-choice asshole basically admit that he's looking forward to women dying. So I'd like to thank Erickson for owning his homicidal misogyny so proudly and for proving my point with a single tweet.
