Chris Christie Tried To Defend The Texas Abortion Law And It Was A Disaster

Chris Christie tried to defend the illegal Texas abortion law and had his head handed to him by former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

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Transcript via ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you support a law like that?

CHRISTIE: Listen, what I support is an honest conversation about abortion in this country. And the fact is the much more significant case, quite frankly, than this Texas case, is the Mississippi case.

BRAZILE: Mississippi one.

CHRISTIE: Because the Mississippi case is following the law the way it’s supposed to go and it’s going to put a 15-week ban in front of the Supreme Court. And, again, remember how Roe versus Wade was decided. Out of nowhere the United States Supreme Court decides that first trimester is not to be protected. And they’re moving forward. Science has changed so much since then. And what Kristen is talking about, I would argue too, that one of the reasons why you’re seeing a decline in abortion is because of the increase in science and how much more people know about viability. And when they know that, they’re more appalled by the act of abortion than they were back in 1973,

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is Roe v. Wade dead?

HEITKAMP: I totally disagree with Chris. I don’t think this isn’t about the science or about what’s happening. This is about fundamentally women being able to make a choice. And what I’m concerned about is how it’s going to further divide the country because reversal of Roe v. Wade does not eliminate abortion in this country. It eliminates a national right for abortion. So now all of a sudden blue states like California, New Jersey, New York, all of a sudden say, we believe in a women’s right to choose. We believe that women have that choice with their doctor to make this decision. And you’re going to see a further polarization of this country of human rights and women’s rights. And so this is extraordinarily dangerous.

Chris Christie’s Faceplant Is A Warning To Republicans

Chris Christie couldn’t defend the Texas law on legal grounds, so he tried to use a warped view that science has deemed that women should lose their right to control their own bodies.

What science is that exactly?

Christie doesn’t say. It all sounds very Gilead.

It is hysterical that Christie would use science to justify the law when Texas Republicans ignored science when writing the law.

A bunch of white men got together and decided that women should lose their rights. Heitkamp’s answer was that this has nothing to do with science. It is a big government attack on individual rights that will divide the country even more.

Christie responded by unconvincingly pulling out the Founding Fathers (more white guys) as his defense. A good rule of thumb is that when somebody pulls out the Founding Fathers in a discussion that has nothing to do with them, it means they are losing.

This Texas abortion law is a political landmine that Chris Christie danced on like he was running to catch up to the neighborhood ice cream truck on a hot summer day.

Any defense of this law is likely to blow up in the faces of Republicans in 2022 and beyond.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association