Ted Cruz Would Force Women to Carry Their Rapist’s Child to Term

On Sunday Ted Cruz doubled down on his support for extreme policies that would force a woman to carry every pregnancy to term — regardless of rape, incest, or other tragic circumstances.

His comments last night on The Kelly File reiterated his long-held positions:

Cruz would criminalize abortion with almost no exceptions, a stance vastly out of touch with the beliefs of the majority of the American people.

Cruz has been nearly monomaniacal in his fervor against abortion — even attempting to shut the government down again in 2015 over federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of reproductive health care.

“Ted Cruz’s dangerous, extremist position to ban abortion across the board is wildly out of touch with women and Americans as a whole. But this is the same frightening zeal we get from all of the GOP candidates — Trump last week voiced intentions to ‘punish’ women who had abortions, and Kasich has signed 18 abortion restrictions as Ohio’s governor.

The prospect of any of the GOP candidates as president is horrific, and Americans need to know what’s at stake in this election.”

—Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Notably, Megyn Kelly did not follow up to ask if he would oppose access to abortion for 10-year-old rape victims, as she did with Mike Huckabee around a widely covered case in Paraguay last year.

In August 2015, Huckabee answered a similar question, confirming he would support policies that would force a ten-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather to carry the pregnancy to term, despite possible risks to her health, the fact that she was a minor, or that she was a survivor of both rape and incest.

Ted Cruz also touts support from the most extreme and dangerous elements of the anti-abortion movement: namely the leader of Operation Rescue, Troy Newman.

• Newman is so extreme that Australia wouldn't let him in their country.

• A member of Newman’s Operation Rescue is responsible for murdering Dr. George Tiller.

• One of the group’s current spokeswomen, Cheryl Sullenger, served two years in prison for attempting to bomb a women’s health center that provided abortions.

• Newman himself has defended multiple other extremists and called the murder of an abortion clinic doctor a “justifiable defensive action.”

Where Ted Cruz Stands on Abortion

Ted Cruz wants to ban safe, legal abortion – even in cases of rape and incest.

His positions:

• Ted Cruz supported the Texas bill HB2, the Texas anti-abortion law that has already shut down more than half of the abortion providers in the state and has forced some women to wait as long as 20 days, drive hundreds of miles, and make multiple trips to access safe, legal abortion.

• He has called Roe v. Wade a “shadow in our nation’s history”

• He is promising to push for a personhood amendment to the Constitution

• He promises to nominate Supreme Court judges who will overturn Roe

What his positions actually mean:

• He would let government get in the way of women and their personal health care decisions. Look at Cruz’s home state of Texas where politicians have done all they can to restrict access to safe, legal abortion.  Since HB 2 passed, a bill Cruz threw his full support behind, the consequences have been devastating. Texas paints a disturbing picture of what American would look like under Ted Cruz.​

• Women have been forced to travel hundreds of miles, cross state lines, and wait weeks to get an abortion, if they can get one at all.

• Researchers estimate that at least 100,000 Texas women have tried to end a pregnancy on their own without medical assistance (read more here and here).  Due to HB2, that number will only increase, since the study found that women were more likely to self-induce abortion if they encountered barriers to reproductive health services.

• If the 2013 restrictions go into full effect, the 5.9 million women of reproductive age in Texas will be left with only 10 health centers that provide safe, legal abortion in the entire state.  

While abortion is an extremely safe procedure, it is safest earlier in pregnancy. With a President Cruz, women could be forced to undergo more dangerous procedures later in pregnancy, for political—and not medical—reasons.  His policies would harm women.

Where Ted Cruz Stands on Planned Parenthood

Ted Cruz wants to cut access to health care at Planned Parenthood — threatening millions.

His positions:

• He’d rather shut down the government then allow Planned Parenthood patients -- many of whom are low-income and have no other options -- receive access to birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment.

• He has voted three times to block patients from accessing services at Planned Parenthood

• He has stated that one of his first acts as President would be to have the Department of Justice investigate Planned Parenthood

What his positions actually mean:

• Cutting access to care at Planned Parenthood has had devastating consequences in the past. Ted Cruz has show that he’d rather shut down the entire government then allow Americans to access their health care at Planned Parenthood.

• In many areas across the country, Planned Parenthood is the only place people can go to receive affordable, high-quality reproductive health care. Cutting access to care would leave hundreds of thousands of patients with no where else to go.

• Three quarters of Planned Parenthood patients are at or below 150% of the poverty line. Many of them would be unable to access affordable health care anywhere else.

• After a Scott County, Indiana Planned Parenthood health center was forced to shut its doors in 2013, the community was left with nowhere to turn for HIV testing and education. Now the county is facing an unprecedented HIV outbreak, which Governor Mike Pence deemed an “epidemic.”

• After Texas, after the state prevented Planned Parenthood health centers from participating in its family planning program for low-income women, the program saw a steep decline in patients receiving services.

Where Ted Cruz Stands on Birth Control

Ted Cruz wants to cut insurance coverage of birth control.

His positions:

• He's called the no-co-pay birth control provision in the Affordable Care Act a ‘sham’

• He believes that birth control is an “abortion-inducing drug”

• He filed an amicus brief in support of allowing employers to deny women birth control

What his positions actually mean:

• Ted Cruz’s policies would make it more expensive and harder to access birth control -- which would have far-reaching consequences for millions of women.

• Eliminating the Affordable Care Act would end the birth control benefit --- thanks to which, more than 55 million women have birth control without a copay.  

• A recent study published in Health Affairs found that the Affordable Care Act has saved women $1.4 billion a year on birth control pills alone — showing the clear economic impact that access to no co-pay birth control has had on women’s lives.  Ted Cruz wants to eliminate those savings.

• Birth control has meant more educational and economic options for women. Since the 1960s when oral contraceptives became available the number of women in the U.S. labor force has nearly  tripled, and the number of women who complete four or more years of college is six times what it was before birth control became legal.

Birth control has helped women move closer to economic equity. Research finds that availability of the pill is responsible for a third of women’s wage increases relative to men. By the 1980s and ’90s, the women who had early access to the pill were making eight percent more each year than those who did not.

 

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Tags: Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Election 2016, Ted Cruz, birth control