George Will Wonders Why Senate Candidate Is Still Talking About A War On Women?

Because Mark Udall's (D-CO) Senate Race Opponent Supports Measures That Would Restrict Women's Rights

Washington Post columnist George Will ignored Colorado GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner's controversial policy positions on women's rights to smear Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) as a one issue candidate. But Gardner has supported measures that would severely limit women's reproductive choice.

On October 10, the Denver Post editorial board endorsed Republican Cory Gardner citing Udall's prioritization of what the Post called “his obnoxious one-issue campaign” on women's issues like abortion.

George Will parroted the Post's criticism of Udall on the October 14 edition Special Report with Bret Baier. Will claimed that “the whole war on women thing has been really worn out by this point,” adding that the issue has been settled because contraception and abortion rights have been firmly ingrained in America for more than 40 years:

But Gardner has supported policies that would roll back women's reproductive choice.

Gardner once supported a controversial personhood amendment that would have expanded the definition of “person” and “child” to include “unborn human beings.” The Center for Reproductive Rights called personhood amendments “an extremist position on reproductive health which could not only ban all abortions from conception, but could also criminalize miscarriages, in-vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and certain forms of contraception."

Gardner also supports the “Life at Conception Act,” a federal bill that would “implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.” In 2012, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated that “personhood” measures “erode women's basic rights,” with “harmful implications for the practice of medicine and on women's access to contraception, fertility treatments, pregnancy termination, and other essential medical procedures.”

George Will's trivialization of women's rights also ignores measures taken by several other states pushing “personhood” amendments and restrictive regulations for abortion clinics that would severely limit access to safe medical care for women.

This post has been updated for accuracy.