How the anti-choice movement’s lies laid the foundation for Donald Trump’s big cover-up – Salon

In the midst of Donald Trump's impeachment trial, asDemocrats continue to lay out a flawless case demonstrating the president's guilt, Trump is turningto the anti-sex lady-haterbrigade to bolster him. That's right: On Friday, Trump will become the first president to show up in personat the annual March for Life. Other Republican presidents have just phoned in their remarks from a distance, since while they need the votes of anti-abortion fanatics, they have clearly found such people as pleasant to be around as the rest of us do.

But Trump is desperate to shore himself up with his almighty base, and that means maximum pandering to the people who have a fetish for forced childbirth. So he's got to showup and talkdirectly to the fundamentalists and thesquads of high school virgins they bus in, using them to fill out the ranks of marchersbefore those teensstart having sex and drifting away from the anti-choice movement.

That Trump is turning to these people as a comfort blanket and a shield against the political damage of impeachment might seem strange at first: What does punishing women for having sex have to do with blackmailing Ukraine? But in truth, the whole situation makes a lot of sense if we unpack it a little.

That's because thetactics that Trump and his defenders are using to ward off consequences for his crimes are thosethe anti-choice movement has honed for decades: Phony piety, bad-faith arguments, a practiced rejection of facts, nutty conspiracy theoriesand a stalwart belief that neither democracy nor justice should stand in the way of white male domination.

For decades, the anti-choice movement as been the vanguard for the worst kinds of right-wing tactics. Everything that we associate with Trumpism, from the nonstop lying to the rise in violent tactics to intimidate the opposition, was field-tested by anti-choicers before it was spread out into the conservative movementas a whole. And now these tactics are being deployed to protect Trump himself.

The most frustrating aspect for those who are following the impeachment process, but aren't part of the Trumpist cult, has been the factthat Republicans seem to live onan entirely different plane of existence fromthe rest of us. While those of us living in the reality-based plane see quite clearly that Trump is a liar and a criminal facing down a mountain of evidence of his guilt, Republicans claimto seeTrump as an innocent lamb who is being unfairly persecuted. Many Republicans, suchas the infamous Rep. Devin Nunes of California, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, have gone a step further, spinning wild conspiracy theories alleging some fictional plot against Trump being concocted by Ukrainians and Democrats.

For those who have been working in the reproductive rights space for awhile, these tactics are quite familiar. The anti-choice movement, for decades, has organized by encouraging its followers to ignore medical and scientific facts in favor of often-bananas conspiracy theories and urban legends.

For instance, in the real world, abortion is safer than other common outpatient procedures like wisdom tooth extraction and colonoscopies, and 99% of women who get abortions report feeling relief and not regret, even years after the fact. But in the delusional world of anti-choicers, abortion is a super-dangerous procedure and "abortion regret syndrome" is widespread. In the real world, contraception prevents abortion. Anti-choicers, however, believe contraception causes abortion by tricking more people into having lots of sex.

Indeed, what's remarkable about the anti-choice movement is how they lie about everything. They lie about their motives, claiming to oppose "killing babies,"when in fact their opposition to LGBT rights and accessible contraception as well as their opposition to universal health care makes clear that their real motives are controlling people's sexuality and enforcing strict gender norms. They claim to be about "protecting women,"but in fact abortion bans are meant to make women's lives more miserable. They even tryto pass laws forcingdoctors to lie to women by telling them they can "reverse" abortions.

Because of all this, anti-choicers havehelped to normalize and mainstream the practice of relentless lying in Republican politics. For decades, Republicans have been able to get away with jaw-dropping lies such as claiming that doctors deliver babies alive and then murder them, that Planned Parenthood rana secret black market in "baby parts,"that black women are committing self-genocidethrough abortion orthat vaccinating teens against HPV will make them promiscuous largely because the subjects of sex and gender roles make mainstream journalists too squeamish to engage in robust debunking.

The only people who were aggressively fighting back against these lies werefeminists, who tend to be marginalized in mainstream political discourse, too often stuck in the "women's issues" ghetto and not taken as seriously as political figures who discuss more male-centric topics. Even today, with more women in political media, it's difficult to get journalists to prioritize questions about reproductive rights when interviewing politicians or moderating debates.

Republicans have used the world of anti-choice politics as a space to practice lying, sharpen their skills at concocting conspiracy theoriesand test out strategies for getting disinformation into the public discourse, all away fromthe spotlight of "serious" political media. This also helped train Republican politicians in the art of stifling their consciences and lying shamelessly for political gain.

As one compelling example, look at Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. She's becomealightning rod for a lot of outrage, because she has been particularly aggressive in lying to defend Trump, going so far as to repeatedly defame Lt.Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified during the impeachment hearings about Trump's attempts to extort Ukraine's president. Blackburn has been pushing ugly lies about Vindman that seem to originatein the QAnon conspiracy-theory world.

It may be shocking to many people that a U.S. senator is willing to go so far but not to reproductive rights activists, who have long known that Blackburn's political rise came thanksto her radicalanti-choice views, complete with all the lies and conspiracy theories that come with them. She has largelygotten away with it because of mainstream media indifference to anti-choice nuttery. Blackburn, for instance, took the lead in Congress in selling the lie that Planned Parenthood sells "baby parts,"as well as falsely accusing doctors of murdering born infants. She's now applying her well-honed skills at shameless lying and defamation to defending her party's president.

A lot of liberals are confused about the mutual admiration club between Trump and anti-choice activists, believing that it's hypocritical for the anti-sex brigade to be so enthused about a thrice-married chronic adulterer. But it actually makes perfectsense, starting with the fact that anti-sex ideology has always madeexceptions for straight male horndoggery, and that Trump shares themisogynist worldview ofanti-choicers.

But perhaps most importantis the shared commitment of bothTrump and the anti-choice movementto lieall the time about everything. Which, in turn, is rooted in their shared contempt for democracy. After all, just as Republicans plan to acquit a guilty presidentagainst the will of the majority of Americans, anti-choicers have been working to ban abortion against the will of 7 out of 10 Americans. For both Trump and the anti-choice zealots, the end justifies the means andthere's nothing wrong with shameless lying to get their way.

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How the anti-choice movement's lies laid the foundation for Donald Trump's big cover-up - Salon