Dustin Siggins comes at you from his home office, known to most as a street gutter.
Welp, I think the conservative movement may have actually reached peak bullshit this week with Dustin Siggins hinting very strongly in a National Review piece that Wendy Davis is lying about why she got two abortions. His evidence for this contention is nada. He mostly just seems to believe It Is Known that "medical" reasons for abortion are bullshit and that women who claim to have medical problems like ectopic pregnancies or fetal abnormalities are simply dirty sluts hiding their dirty sluttitude. Having hinted that she had an abortion because of Known Dirty Slut reasons, he then proceeds to diagnose her from afar.
Reactions to the alleged revelation have varied. Some have offered compassion for both Davis and her deceased child, expressing sorrow over Davis’s alleged depression, which is a frequent — and frequently ignored — consequence of abortion. Others have looked at the motivation for publishing the book less than two months before an election that Davis is on course to lose by double digits. Still others question the accuracy of her claims related to the abortion.
After hinting strongly that Davis is a dirty slut liar, Siggins proceeds, without a whiff of self-consciousness, to lie out his ass, arguing that abortion causes mental illness. The truth is that the American Psychological Association has performed an extensive review of the research into abortion and mental health and found, "This research review found no evidence that a single abortion harms a woman’s mental health. It also found that women who report distress post-abortion typically have other risk factors for mental health problems, such as substance abuse, poverty or exposure to domestic violence."
But Siggins ignores the truth and instead writes:
Operation Rescue senior policy analyst Cheryl Sullenger was more blunt than Horne, saying, “Davis’s stated experiences confirm what many post-abortive women feel: the emotional aftermath of abortion. Perhaps Davis’s story will cause some in her own party and her political backers alike to acknowledge the toll an abortion takes on a woman’s overall health and well-being.”
Cheryl Sullenger, he fails to note, did time in prison because of an attempt to bomb an abortion clinic, making her an actual, bona fide, political terrorist. Well done, National Review. You have actually stooped to taking the word of a religious fanatic who has resorted to terrorism over that of the American Psychological Association. You insinuated someone is lying, without a shred of evidence, in the same article that is stuffed with misleading information designed to suggest that women who get abortions are going to be punished with mental illness.
The conservative movement is notoriously dishonest, but this is a new low. Hats off to you, Dusty Siggins of the National Review. Just when you think that conservative pundits can't get any more cynically dishonest, you showed that the bar can always be lowered.
