Minnesota Republican Matt Birk Warns Abortion Leads to Women Having Careers, Claims Pro-choice Advocates Are Always Playing “the Rape Card”

Question: How do you know for certain that most antiabortion advocates want to ban the medical procedure not to protect, as they claim, the “sanctity of human life,” but in order to control women’s bodies and relegate them to the status of second-class citizens? Answer: Because they keep telling us! Over and over again!

One recent example would be the commentary of Matt Birk, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Minnesota. While Birk, a former professional football player has long made his position on abortion clear—in 2020 he called abortion “evil” and said undergoing the medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape “will only make things worse”—remarks he delivered on the day Roe v. Wade was overturned may be even more enlightening. Speaking at an antiabortion convention, Birk told the audience: “It’s not over. Our culture loudly but also stealthily, promotes abortion. Telling women they should look a certain way, have careers, all these things.” Would Birk prefer women be sent back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant? Sure sounds like it!

Naturally, he went on: “Rape is obviously a horrible thing,” Birk said. “But an abortion is not going to heal the wounds of that. Two wrongs, it’s not going to make it right…. One of the arguments that I saw probably 20 times online today was about rape. And you know, obviously, they always want to go to the rape card.” Ah yes, the old “rape card,” that thing people “go to” when, after experiencing a horrific act of violence, they decide they don’t want to be forced to carry their attacker’s child to term and then coparent with them.

But wait, there’s more: “Rape is obviously a horrible thing,” Birk repeated, before deploying perhaps one of the most bizarre non sequiturs in history. “Shortly after we won the Super bowl—did I mention I won the Super Bowl?… They said, well, abortion’s legal. And it was kind of an easy out for a lot of people…. A lot of things have been legal before that we’ve changed, right. We always hear about, I’m sure you’ve heard—I know I’m talking to a bunch of pro-life warriors here—you know slavery used to be legal, right. Which is an interesting comparison to make, because really the way that the other side treats an unborn child is basically that the unborn child is the property of the mother. Other laws, you know, women used to not be able to vote in our country. Now we let ’em drive. I mean, I have three teenager daughters that drive, I don’t know if that’s a good law or not. Just kidding. Sorry, kidding, kidding to all the women out there. And don’t tell my wife I used that joke, she hates that joke.”