During a House oversight committee hearing to address state restrictions on abortion access, Democratic members hosted experts to discuss this important issue. But Republicans invited BlazeTV's Allie Beth Stuckey to spread harmful anti-choice misinformation.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform convened a hearing on November 14 “examining state efforts to undermine access to reproductive health care,” with a particular focus on the state of Missouri. And with good reason: Earlier this year, Missouri passed an eight-week ban on abortion that was ultimately blocked by a federal judge. In addition, Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services fought to close the last remaining abortion clinic in the state -- which would make it the first state without any access to legal abortion care since Roe v. Wade. Most recently, The Kansas City Star reported that the Department had tracked patient’s menstrual cycles to allegedly “identify patients who had undergone failed abortions.”
With that in mind, House Democrats invited relevant and highly qualified witnesses to address the situation: Jennifer Box, who detailed the difficulties she faced in having an abortion in Missouri; Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an OB-GYN who works at the only abortion clinic in the state and explained how Missouri’s attempts to close the clinic harmed both patients and providers; and two representatives from national reproductive rights organizations -- Fatima Goss Graves of National Women’s Law Center and Marcela Howell of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda.
House Republicans, however, decided to invite a right-wing media figure as their sole witness in the hearing: Stuckey. As she’s done in the past, Stuckey repeated right-wing misinformation about abortion, particularly promoting the lie that Democratic majority states are passing “barbaric laws” to permit “the virtually unrestricted access to abortion until the point of birth.” Other right-wing media figures and anti-abortion movement leaders gleefully promoted Stuckey’s lies about abortion during the hearing.
Republicans relying on right-wing media and the anti-choice movement to promote anti-abortion lies isn’t new, but that doesn’t mean the blatant disregard for actual expertise and facts should be overlooked or dismissed as acceptable conduct now. After all, Stuckey's lies are the same kind of right-wing media misinformation behind anti-abortion legislation in Missouri and other states facing attacks on abortion access.
