Republicans love telling America that they are pro-life in public, but when it comes to their personal lives, it seems like their morals are a little more flexible. This particular moment of GOP hypocrisy comes from Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, who asked his own mistress to get an abortion during a pregnancy scare this year.
The story was originally broke by local newspaper the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who obtained documents detailing conversations between Murphy and Shannon Edwards, a woman half his age who he recently admitted an affair with. The got ahold of a text conversation between the lovers in January, when Edwards told Murphy that she might be pregnant. One text from Edwards read:
“You have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options.”
Murphy replied:
“I get what you say about my March for life messages. I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
So Murphy, a Family Research Council–approved pro-life politician is officially outed as not believing in practicing what he preaches. To make things even richer, he is the current sponsor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would ban abortion care provided after 20 weeks’ gestation. Which, by the way, is in violation of Roe v. Wade.
Major kudos to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for this delicious little moment. And kudos to Edwards for calling Murphy out on his hypocrisy.
Watch a local Pittsburgh news outlet break the story here:
Feature image via YouTube screengrab.
