MSNBC’s “The All-Out Assault on Women” segment on Saturday’s Melissa Harris-Perry declared that pro-lifers want “compulsory pregnancy” to “punish you for having had sex” and should be banned from “any decision-making table.” Then the conversation turned really absurd...
Melissa Harris-Perry (show host and Tulane University professor) hosted a panel of women, including Anthea Butler (University of Pennsylvania professor), Lizz Winstead (comedian, producer) and Irin Carmon (MSNBC.com writer). Here’s the exchange:
Winstead: I never have understood how anybody gets a seat at any decision-making table by saying two different things. One: “I’m not a doctor, and I know nothing about science, but –“ Okay, out! Two: “I want to reduce the number of abortions, and the way I want to do that is to remove access to affordable birth control.” You? Out!
Carmon: In Ohio, the quote-unquote right-to-life is suing to block the Medicaid expansion, which does not cover abortion. It covers contraception. And they – you know, there’s a split, but there’s two groups that are suing that don’t want low-income women to have access to contraception.
Harris-Perry: So no contraception, no abortion – compulsory pregnancy – and then, the children that you have, have to be hungry. Because that is what will punish you for having had sex.
Winstead: That’s right.
Harris-Perry: That is what will punish you.
Winstead: They don’t want poor women to have joy.
Butler: No they don’t, and they want to sacralize sperm, and it’s time we quit sacralizing sperm in this country, and making it the most important thing that there is.
Reminder: Two of the panelists contributing to this farcical, hate-mongering debate are professors at esteemed institutes of higher learning.
