This Fu@#king Guy

[Content Note: War on agency; video may autoplay at link.]

image of Dr. Ben Carson speaking at a campaign event, gesticulating with his hands, to which I've added text reading: 'I took that 'First Do No Harm' thing as kind of a loose suggestion.'

If I've said it once, I've said it three hundred and eighty-seven times: My favorite part of every Republican presidential primary is listening to a bunch of cis dudes pontificate about abortion rights.

Dr. Ben Carson, y'all:
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said he would "love" to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, making abortion illegal nationwide, with almost no exemptions.

"I'm a reasonable person and if people can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they would like to kill a baby, I'll listen," Carson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Nothing says "reasonable" like miscategorizing abortion as "killing a baby."

*thisface*

His eminent reasonableness did not stop there, naturally:
While the Republican candidate said he opposes abortions for unwanted pregnancies and in cases of rape and incest, the retired neurosurgeon told moderator Chuck Todd he might be open to allowing abortions to preserve the life and health of the mother.

"That's an extraordinarily rare situation," Carson said. "But if in that very rare situation it occurred, I believe there's room to discuss that."
First of all, it is not "extraordinarily rare" for a pregnancy to have serious complications. Secondly, even if it were, only in a country where fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them would it be considered remotely acceptable to suggest that a lifesaving medical procedure should be banned, because death from a lack of access to that procedure is rare, anyway.

It's bad enough when the usual Republican d-bags talk absolute shite about abortion, but Ben Carson is a doctor, and what he says about abortion carries the extra (presumed) authority of his medical expertise.

He should know better. By which I mean: A doctor of all people should know that criminalizing legal abortion, or so severely reducing access that it might as well be illegal, will result in more people dying from pregnancy, or attempts to terminate it, not fewer.

(He knows. He just doesn't care.)

(Asshole.)

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