In a piece called “Finally, a Politician Admits to Having an Abortion Simply Because She Wasn’t Ready for a Baby,” Slate’s Amanda Marcotte praises “rising star” Nevada state representative and lieutenant governor Democratic nominee Lucy Flores for openly admitting to having an abortion at sixteen because she was simply not ready to be a mother.
Saying that Flores “bucks a stunning array of expectations that people have for politicians”—including growing up poor, doing time in prison, and having a “regrettable ankle tattoo”—Marcotte cites Benjy Sarlin who describes Flores as a rising Latina star in the Democratic party in part because her strategy is to emphasize her rough background rather than gloss over it.
Marcotte gives Flores highest marks for her willingness to talk openly about her abortion at 16, which she did during a testimony in support of a bill expanding school sex-ed programs. Saying she did not want to be like her sisters, who all had children at a young age, Flores chose to get an abortion at 16, something she said tearfully that she does not regret:
“Since I’m sharing so much this session, I might as well keep going,” she said. “I always said that I was the only one who didn’t have kids in their teenage years. That’s because at 16, I got an abortion.”
Her eyes welled up and her voice caught as she described how she’d convinced her father to pay the $200 cost for the procedure. She didn’t want to end up like her sisters, Flores told him.
“I don’t regret it,” she said. “I don’t regret it because I am here making a difference, at least in my mind, for many other young ladies and letting them know that there are options and they can do things to not be in the situation I was in, but to prevent.”
Marcotte writes that while some “anti-choicers” are “unsurprisingly” shaming Flores, many Republicans believe that going after Flores’ past is not a good idea, something Marcotte argues is proof that real-life contexts for abortions dampens conservative criticism:
Polling data supports this idea, showing that 59 percent of people like Flores more after hearing her life story and only 17 percent like her less. Turns out that it's one thing to describe a generic woman as "selfish" if she has an abortion, but putting an abortion in the context of a woman's life story makes her much harder to attack—and her choice much easier to understand.
