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MO Sen Candidate Mark McCloskey Knows Teenage Rape Victims Will Be Totally Fine Having To Carry Their Rapists' Babies

He went there.

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Screenshot via Twitter

What is it with these Missouri senate wannabes? How can they all be so unbelievably filthy and obsessed with the bodies of women and girls?

First there was Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, who knew that “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” magically expelling a zygote resulting from non-consensual sex. And now that freakshow Mark McCloskey, the personal injury lawyer who infamously waved a loaded gun at peaceful protesters, is back to show ’em that misogyny is back, baby. As if it ever left.

“There’s a lot of candidates that say they’re pro-life but really they’re not completely pro-life,” a woman asked McCloskey at a forum in Osage Beach first reported by the Kansas City Star. “There’s a lot of, ‘Well in this case it would be allowed.’”

The candidate was unequivocal that he doesn’t “believe in any exceptions.”

“We were down in Poplar Bluff a couple of months ago, and somebody asked me that question, ‘So you would force a 13-year-old who’s raped by a family member to keep that baby?’” he said. “And I said, ‘Yes, and more than that I’ve got that client.’ I’ve got a client who was raped by an uncle when she was 13 years old, had the child; she finished high school, finished college and got a master’s degree. That child she would have aborted finished high school, finished college and now has a master’s degree.”

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The Star received no response to inquiries as to whether the client or the client’s child or both had earned a master’s degree. But assuming arguendo that this client actually exists, what in the world does her experience have to do with the right of girls and women to control their own bodies? McCloskey is a lawyer, and his go-to argument is functionally, “I know a guy who drank bleach and survived, so we should all be chugging Clorox smoothies.”

The reality is that adolescent pregnancies for any reason are associated with worse outcomes for mothers and babies alike. From low birth weights to high rates of maternal death, pregnancy is much riskier for young girls than it is for grown women, even without the trauma of being forced to carry a child conceived from sexual assault. But Mr. No Exceptions isn’t too worried about that, since he believes that women should be forced to carry all pregnancies to term, even those which might kill them or leave them with lasting physical damage.

He knows a gal who made it out the other side alive, so every woman and girl should have to surrender her bodily autonomy, right?

This used to be a bridge too far for Republicans, a position too radical for any candidate to take if he hoped to win the general election. Now it appears to be standard Republican dogma. McCloskey clearly believes it will be no barrier to him in the general election, even as supporters of abortion rights — i.e. the majority of Americans, including 61 percent who favor access to abortion in the first trimester — are increasingly energized by the Supreme Court’s apparent willingness to gut Roe v. Wade.

But first McCloskey will have to get through the primary, where his main opponent is former Gov. Eric Greitens. Greitens was forced to resign after a woman accused him of tying her down and taking naked photos of her to ensure she’d keep quiet about their affair. Clearly McCloskey’s not the only candidate in this race who doesn’t give a damn about women’s bodily autonomy.

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Hey, Missouri, you have a way to shut this whole thing down. Legitimately, with votes.

Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey says teen incest victims should be denied abortions [Kansas City Star]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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