Republican Men Are Against Abortion — Until They Want Their Mistress To Get One

For the GOP, the party of "family values," few things are more destructive to the family — the "bedrock of our nation" — than abortion. Republican men in Congress have made banning legal and safe abortion a cornerstone of their platform, pushing policy that restricts access to the procedure time and time again, as the "sanctity of life" of an unborn foetus is paramount to America's future.

That's all well and good — unless said Republican wants the woman he's having an affair with to get an abortion.

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On Friday, Elliott Broidy, the Republican National Committee's deputy finance chairman, resigned after it was revealed he had President Donald Trump's personal lackey lawyer Michael Cohen pay off a Playboy Playmate he was having an affair with and who he happened to get pregnant. “I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate. At the end of our relationship, this woman shared with me that she was pregnant. She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period,” Broidy said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Broidy is not an outlier in the sanctimonious pool that is GOP men with skeletons in their closets.

Last year, anti-choice and pro-hypocrite Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy resigned after it was revealed he asked a woman he was having an extra-marital affair with to have an abortion. In texts revealed by the Post-Gazette, Murphy said he never wrote any of his anti-abortion messaging — it was all his staff's doing. Even after Murphy's scandal was revealed, he voted yes on a 20-week abortion ban bill, that he just so happened to be the co-sponsor of.

Rep. Murphy isn't even particularly bold when it comes to his hypocrisy. In 2012, Rep. Scott DesJarlais — who called himself a "consistent supporter of pro-life values" — was outed as having supported his ex-wife getting multiple abortions. Scott "Family Values" DesJarlais also slept with patients, which led him to be fined by a medical board.

He then ran for reelection — and actually won.

Then there's the party's current leader, President Donald Trump, who in a 2004 interview with Howard Stern said he asked then-girlfriend Marla Maples, "Well, what are we going to do about this?" when she revealed she was pregnant. “I’m glad it happened. I have a great little daughter, Tiffany. But, you know, at the time it was like, ‘Excuse me, what happened?'" Trump said.

In shouldn't be shocking that the party that has some members who believe there should be no exceptions for abortion — even in cases of incest and rape — also have members who like to bend the rules when it comes to their own lives. As author Jennifer Weiner wrote in the New York Times last year, "It’s almost as if these men don’t really believe that every time sperm and egg combine, the result is a child worthy of being cherished and protected. It’s almost as if these men are fighting to make abortion a crime because they’re more invested in curtailing women’s options and controlling their bodies than they are with saving innocent lives."

The hypocrisy may seem laughable at times, but it has real consequences for women across the US, as the GOP continues to wage a war on women's access to healthcare.

The party that says the government shouldn't be involved in citizens' healthcare should take their own advice (and perhaps not throw stones when they lives in glass houses) and leave the decision of getting an abortion or continuing a pregnancy between a woman and her doctor.