Earlier this week, I told you that Shannon Grove, a state assemblywoman from California, made herself sound like a total idiot at a gathering of pro-life activists in Sacramento. The Bakersfield Republican declared that her state’s crushing drought was a sign that God was angry about legalized abortion. Well, believe it or not, that wasn’t the most offensive thing Grove said in her speech. Not by a longshot.
Grove tried to walk back her comments yesterday. While she admitted saying that it rained on the night that a draconian anti-abortion bill became law in Texas, she denied saying that God “has a hold on California.” Instead, she said that “God has his hand on California.” Fair enough. But as much attention as that snippet got, RH Reality Check caught something else while listening to her speech at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet.
Last month, the state assembly passed a bill that, among other things, require all licensed family planning or pregnancy centers to notify women about their reproductive rights. It would also require unlicensed centers to post notices saying that they aren’t medically licensed. These provisions are aimed at reining in crisis pregnancy centers, most of which have a bad habit of scaring women with inaccurate information. Grove is a violent opponent of this bill, saying that it amounts to an attack on free speech. But she went further in her speech last week. “The last time the government made people carry a government message,” she said, “it was World War II and they made people wear yellow stars.”
For those who don’t remember, all Jews in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe were required to wear yellow stars as a badge of shame. While Holocaust references seem to be all too common in pro-life circles, this reference from Grove is one of the most outrageous yet. If you think there is any parallel between being told that you can’t deceive women in this way and one of the most degrading tactics of the Holocaust, you’re an idiot. And that’s about the most diplomatic term I can use.
This argument is particularly outrageous when you consider what goes on at some of these centers. Two years ago, Caitlin Bancroft of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia visited a crisis pregnancy center in Manassas, where she was not only told the usual shibboleth that abortion and birth control pills can cause cancer, but that condoms are “naturally porous” and don’t protect against STDs. Investigators with NARAL Pro-Choice California got more or less the same spiel this spring; at one center, a woman was told that her IUD was really a baby. Tell me, Shannon–how is reining in deceptive practices like these in any way comparable to making Jews wear a badge of shame?
Unless I missed something, no one from the California ProLife Council or the state assembly’s Republican leadership have called out Grove for this. Gee, has it occurred to anyone in those bodies that maybe, just maybe you won’t win anyone over if you sound like an uninformed idiot? Apparently not. Then again, it’s probably too much to expect the California ProLife Council to distance itself from Grove’s appalling parallel. After all, the larger pro-life movement seems to have no problem with Cheryl Sullenger still being on Operation Rescue’s payroll even though she essentially gave George Tiller’s number to a guy off the street.
I look at this, and I see this as further validation of the circumstances that ultimately pushed me from being weakly pro-life back to being pro-choice on abortion. More and more, I saw the pro-life movement engaging in tactics that I couldn’t in good conscience defend because I knew I’d sound like an idiot in trying to do so. Well, add another to the list. If Grove expended so much effort in trying to debunk the talk that California’s drought was caused by abortion, why hasn’t she addressed her outrageous claim that crisis pregnancy clinics could potentially be degraded the way Jews were during the Holocaust? Maybe we should ask her directly–in a civil manner, of course–on Facebook and Twitter.
