Mike Pence Comment About Rape Victims Wanting Abortions-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence once said that allowing rape victims to get abortions would lead to women trying to get raped.
The Truth:
This comment about rape victims and abortion didn’t come from Mike Pence.
It came from a fake news website called Newslo in a story that appeared under the headline, “Mike Pence: Allowing Rape Victims to Have Abortions Will Lead to Women Trying to Get Raped.” The story reports:
The Republican war on women continues unabated. The same week that conservatives argued in the Supreme Court that employers should be able to stop their employees from getting contraception outside of the company health plan, Indiana joined the ranks of states like Texas and Florida in passing a draconian law that purports to protect women, while in fact, endangering their health by making safe abortion much harder to get. And Gov. Mike Pence recently signed it. The bill is stuffed with as many asinine restrictions on abortion with an eye towards making abortion as miserable and humiliating an experience as possible, and ideally something women can’t get legally at all.
Asked to comment on his approval of a piece of legislation that basically promotes hatred towards women once stripped of all the legal terms, Pence argued in an interview with The Huffington Post that “abortion as such was a mistake since the day it was first invented.” “So, let’s get that straight right away – I oppose abortion for any reason whatsoever because I believe that killing someone, or something, if you will, that hasn’t developed a consciousness just yet is the ultimate act of crime. And if we’re murderers of innocent beings who can’t defend themselves, how are we to expect people with a fully developed consciousness to stop murdering each other?” the Indiana governor said.
Within two days of being posted, the story had been shared nearly 50,000 times on Facebook. Taken out of context, many people were led to believe that the story was true, and that Mike Pence had actually made the statement about legal abortions for rape victims.
However, Newslo identifies itself as “the first hybrid satire/news platform on the web.” The stories blend truth and satire, and readers are able to click a “show facts’ button to highlight parts of the story that are true.