Presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke has apparently decided that he’s not going to answer any questions for the length of the campaign.
The 46-year-old Democrat held a campaign event on Monday in Cleveland. There, he was asked a question — a very specific question — by a woman in the audience: “Are you for or against third-trimester abortions or are you going to protect the lives of third-trimester babies?”
She went on to make her question more clear (in case that wasn’t clear enough). “Because there’s really not a medical necessity for abortion,” she said, “It’s not a medical emergency procedure because physically third trimester abortions take up to three days to have so in that sense if there were an emergency the doctors would just do a C-section and you don’t have to kill a baby. So are you for or against third-trimester abortions?”
Well. Before we give you Beto’s answer, we just want to point out that the question could not be more clear.
Here’s what Beto said. “So, the question is about abortion and reproductive rights.”
Wait, what? No, the question was clearly about third-trimester abortions. But Beto went on. “And, my answer to you is, that should be a decision that the woman makes.”
The room burst into cheers and whoops for the tried-and-true talking point. Speaking loudly over them and drawing more cheers, the failed Texas Senate candidate said: “I trust her.” He even did that politician’s hand gesture, the old Bill Clinton move, thumb pressed to top of hand, pointing at audience.
While Democrats love abortion, most Americans clearly do not — especially late-term abortions.
“Americans’ support for the legality of abortion varies sharply when they are asked to evaluate it on a trimester basis, which is consistent with the pattern Gallup has found for more than 20 years,” Gallup reported in June. “Six in 10 U.S. adults think abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. However, support drops by about half, to 28%, for abortions conducted in the second three months, and by half again, to 13%, in the final three months.”
13%.
The slick politician’s move to answer a different question than the one that was asked did not go unnoticed.
Notice how Beto takes an articulate question about abortion *after fetal viability* and the medical details of these procedures and restates it to the crowd as a question about “abortion and reproductive rights.” That’s what they have to do to defend third-trimester abortion.
— Alexandra DeSanctis Marr (@xan_desanctis) March 18, 2019
