COLUMBUS, OH – WVXU Columnist Howard Wilkinson today highlighted that Bernie Moreno continues to “dra[w] the ire of political figures from across the [political] spectrum” for mocking women for wanting to make their own health care decisions.
As Wilkinson notes in his column, Moreno has called himself “100% pro-life with no exceptions” and supports “a federal ban on abortions.”
Both parties continue to call out Bernie Moreno for his “flippant” and “shallow” comments, including Republican Nikki Haley and a former aide to John Boehner, who called out Bernie Moreno for insulting and “undermin[ing]” Ohio women.
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WVXU: Analysis: Left and right come after Moreno for ‘joke’ about women over 50 and abortion rights
Howard Wilkinson – September 26, 2024
- Bernie Moreno, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, may well learn the hard way that women in Ohio do not see reproductive rights as a punchline for a lame joke.
- Moreno, at a recent campaign event in Lebanon, before a friendly crowd of GOP voters, said something that is reverberating across the country, drawing the ire of political figures from across the spectrum — from Nikki Haley to Rachel Maddow.
- “You know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion’s it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’”
- But wait, it gets better: “It’s a little crazy, by the way, but, especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
- Chances are, a majority of suburban women in Ohio — many of them over 50 years old — are not laughing.
- They are Democrats, Republicans and independents and among the very same set of Ohio voters who, last year, overwhelmingly voted for a ballot issue which enshrines the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care into the Ohio constitution.
- It passed with 57% of the vote.
- Moreno was not one of them; he spoke out loudly and often against the abortion rights amendment.
- Haley, the former South Carolina governor who unsuccessfully challenged Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, came at Moreno from the right flank.
- “Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend.”
- He described himself as “100% pro-life without exceptions” during his 2021 U.S. Senate campaign. This year, he said he supported a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks into a pregnancy, as well as giving states the option to enact tougher restrictions.
- To say that women over 50 have nothing at stake when it comes to reproductive rights and abortion access can be easily refuted.
- Women well beyond the age of 50 — the age when Moreno believes women lose interest in the issue of abortion — have good reasons to care about reproductive rights.
- For many of them, they themselves needed reproductive health care in their young years. They know first-hand what many women in the U.S. face today.
- And, finally, and most importantly, they care about others.That’s a lesson about Ohio women that Bernie Moreno could learn himself.
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