On Tuesday, August 25, the Republican National Convention welcomed anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson to speak about the President's pro-life policies (using false and misleading statistics).
Unfortunately, her speech was overshadowed online by her tweets claiming women shouldn't have a right to vote and resurfaced video in which she says police would be right to racially profile her Black son.
Johnson, who rose to prominence in conservative circles after leaving her job at Planned Parenthood in 2009 to speak out against abortion, claims on her website to support a "new kind of feminism."
Johnson's "new" kind of feminism boldly think the world was better when women didn't have equal rights.
On Twitter, Johnson volunteered that a preference for "household voting" was one of her more controversial opinions and, to be fair, she was absolutely right.
In Johnson's preferred system, every household would get one vote and if there were disagreements between household members, the husband would get the ultimate say.
Online, Johnson has repeatedly scoffed at people who think denying women the right to vote would make them lesser citizens.
Of course, Johnson is no stranger to claiming some citizens are lesser than others. In a recently resurfaced video, Johnson claimed that it would be "smart" for police to "be more careful around my brown son than my white son."
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In the video, recovered by VICE News, Johnson says:
"Right now, Jude is an adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy. But one day, he's going to grow up and he's going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking-maybe brown man."
"Statistically, I look at our prison population and I see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes."
"So statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my Jude walking down the road… because of the statistics that he knows in his head, that these police officers know in their head, they're going to know that statistically my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons."
Twitter was aghast at Johnson's dated, bigoted beliefs.
It seems shocking that the RNC would give any credence to the opinions of a woman like Abby Johnson.
Despite Johnson's claims about her experiences at Planned Parenthood have been repeatedly challenged.
In truth, abortion is a safe and common procedure.
