Dense Pence Could Save The Democrats

Talk about life in a bubble…Mike Pence has been hawking his book (“So Help Me God”) and in a recent interview with Chuck Todd, displayed the perceptive characteristics that prompted what I’ve been told was his law school nickname: dense Pence.

Pence’s smarmy opinions will come as no surprise to Hoosiers who watched Mr. Piety with growing alarm during his gubernatorial term. In the interview, Pence doubled down on his support for anti-choice laws. When Todd asked him to reconcile that support with his purported belief in limited government–to explain how his declared opposition to “invasive government” co-existed with his insistence that  government force women to give birth– he simply repeated his clearly theocratic position.

Evidently, using the power of the state to impose the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians on everyone else isn’t “invasive government.” Who knew?

Pence also took the position that a fetus should be afforded constitutional rights–an opinion that places him at the very far reaches of the reactionary right.

As a snarky post on Daily Kos reported, however, he did exempt one medical procedure from the iron arm of the state: IVF–or fertility treatments. And why would this self-appointed “soldier of God” allow science to shape his approach to this method of assistingreproduction, when he pointedly ignores what medical science tells us about pregnancy and abortion generally?

Stay calm, America. While you’re taking some time to regain your breath after facing the raw, masculine courage it must have taken for a Republican to say out loud that maybe American citizens shouldn’t be thrown in prison for using a widely available infertility treatment that a creepy undercult of American society believes they and only they should be in charge of, you don’t need to be too surprised here. Yeah, it turns out a Republican thinks a particular medical procedure should not be criminalized only because it’s one that personally benefited his own family.

As that snarky post pointed out, this willingness to exempt a procedure because his family personally benefitted from it is patently inconsistent with the “theology” of “pro life” Christianists.  (But then, giving the state authority over reproduction is also inconsistent with the libertarian conservatism that opposed requiring masks and/or vaccinations during a pandemic…Pence evidently read Emerson to say that consistency–rather than foolish consistency– is the hobgoblin of little minds…) (Silly me–I doubt Mike ever read Emerson, or for that matter, anything but his bible…)

The problem with IVF, then, is that if you believe that the primary role of God is to police everybody’s sex lives and make sure nobody is either making babies or not making babies without the express written consent of Himself, Major League Baseball, and/or whatever local pastor has a bug up his rectory about it, then the IVF process of fertilizing multiple eggs and implanting each of them into the uterus in the hopes that at least one of them will successfully attach and grow means all the fertilized eggs that don’t get used or which don’tsuccessfully attach themselves are all full-fledged human beings and well, now you, your partner, and the doctors are all serial killers for not being able to bring all those fertilized eggs to term as well. Many far-right religious conservatives want would-be parents to go to jail for that, too.

If Mike Pence thinks his incoherent theocracy will sell to the American public, he really does occupy a very small bubble.

Research tells us that 24% of American women will have at least one abortion by age 45. Fifty-nine percent of those women are mothers. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans identifying as “pro-choice” rose to its highest level in June of this year.

Pro-choice sentiment is now the highest Gallup has measured since 1995 when it was 56% — the only other time it has been at the current level or higher — while the 39% identifying as “pro-life” is the lowest since 1996.

Even among those self-identifying as “pro-life,” there is diminished support for the sort of complete ban favored by Pence and his theocratic cohort.

The latest data show Americans are less likely than a year ago to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, falling six points to 13%, the lowest Gallup has recorded for this position since 1995. At the same time, the 35% wanting it legal under any circumstances is the highest in Gallup’s trend by one point, after increasing slightly each of the past three years.

Pence’s obvious belief that his intransigence on this issue will help him electorally reminded me of something my kids would say to me after I uttered an observation that was wildly at odds with the national mood: “You don’t get out much, do you?”

Dense Pence doesn’t get out much.

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