White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has many people cheering after perfectly laying out the hypocrisy of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's proposed nationwide abortion ban.
Graham's proposed bill would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy regardless of state-level laws, a shocking reversal of Republicans' attempts to justify the Supreme Court's overturn of abortion rights in its June Dobbs decision by casting it as a deferral to the 10th Amendment concept of "states' rights."
Graham himself repeatedly defended Dobbs on the basis of the hallowed Republican devotion to states' rights, but it seems he's forgotten all about that now, and Jean-Pierre wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to point out the inconsistency.
In Tuesday's press briefing, she directly quoted Graham's own words to paint his proposed abortion ban as precisely what it is: an attempt to force the right-wing's radical anti-science reproductive healthcare agenda on the entire country, including "blue" states.
See her comments below:
Asked about the proposed ban, Jean-Pierre said:
“I’m going to quote Senator Lindsey Graham from Aug. 7, 2022."
"And he said: ‘I’ve been consistent. I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion.’"
"That’s from his own mouth, and now he wants to do a national ban.”
Graham's bill, melodramatically titled the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act,” seeks to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, hardly the "late-term" focus the bill's name suggests, given that 15 weeks is only the second trimester of a normal 40-week pregnancy.
Many have theorized Graham's bill is an attempt by the GOP to appear more reasonable on the topic of abortion in advance of the midterms in November because of the massive backlash the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade seems to have inspired, including a recent landslide defeat of a proposed abortion ban in Kansas, a reliably Republican-voting state.
The bill is a new version of legislation Graham has tried to pass before, though previous versions sought to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than 15.
Graham's bill does include exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But as Jean-Pierre also noted, it would uphold current state-level abortion bans that do not contain such exceptions, and have already resulted in adverse health outcomes since the SCOTUS Dobbs decision.
On Twitter, people applauded Jean-Pierre for speaking out about a proposal that has left many outraged.
As many have pointed out, Graham's and the GOP's gambit is far more likely to blow up in their faces.
Jean-Pierre called Graham's proposal “wildly out of step with what Americans believe," a claim borne out by the record-breaking surge in female voter registrations since June 24, including in some of the deepest red states in the country.
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