Dr. Ben Carson was asked Tuesday on “The View” about his controversial statements in August that, while there isn’t a war on women, he believes that there is a war “on what’s inside of women.” To clarify, he said:
“We’re killing babies all over the place.”
Whoopi Goldberg was not letting him off with this very simplistic answer:
“Have you met with the women who have to make these horrendous decisions of whether or not to bring a child into the world…Are you empathetic to them?”
Carson assured Whoopi that he was empathetic to these women and then proved that he knows nothing about them. For instance, he offered this gem of a solution to ending the need for abortion services:
“What we need to do is make sure that we provide adequate daycare centers for these women so that they can get their GED, they can get their associate’s degrees, their bachelor’s degrees, their master’s degrees…”
“So you’re assuming these are mothers who are uneducated?” Whoopi asked.
“Most of them,” Carson answered.
The audience booed and exclaimed shock over his answer, and with good reason. The CDC reports that the majority of abortions are performed on women in their 20s, not young high school and college teens. Infoplease states that only 18% of all abortions are performed on teenagers and 61% of all abortions are sought by women who already have children.
Joy Behar pressed Carson on the GOP’s attack on Planned Parenthood, asking why those so opposed to abortion aren’t “applauding” Planned Parenthood for providing birth control to women who need it. Carson insisted that he did not speak for the entire Republican Party but that he does support birth control services, just not abortion:
“So I guess you believe in daycare centers and maternity leave and all the things that go along with raising a kid when you don’t have the money?”
Carson evaded the question by expressing disgust at the insistence that he benefited from public benefits as a child (which no one had asked about), and that he just wants to:
“Provide people with a mechanism for coming out of the state of dependency and climbing the ladder and becoming part of the fabric of America.”
Behar went on to question Dr. Carson about the Affordable Care Act and his opposition to it considering its benefits to women and reproductive health services. Carson insisted that his opposition was based on its being forced on Americans who did not want it, although NBC News reported in April that 56% of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to “side with the government” on continuing to subsidize those who couldn’t afford insurance.
It makes little sense to insist that one is against abortion while working to shut down much-needed clinics that provide birth control to women. It makes even less sense to work toward shutting down those clinics while also working to end healthcare access through the Affordable Care Act if you’re truly concerned about women, their health, and their success.
Most importantly, Dr. Carson, you don’t help women come “out of the state of dependency” by forcing them to have children, and while it may come as a surprise to the GOP, women – including the 30 percent of us who will seek abortion services at some time in our lives – have always been “part of the fabric of America.”
