In a recent interview, the leading GOP candidate for Governor of Michigan, Trump supporter Tudor Dixon, said that a 14-year-old incest/rape victim was the “perfect example” of her justification for a near total ban on abortion in Michigan.
While speaking with journalist Charlie LeDuff, on his “No Bullshit News” internet show, Dixon, founder of a “pro-America, pro-Constitution morning news program” for children, doubled down on her total opposition to abortion in all cases except when saving the life of the mother.
LeDuff asked her about a hypothetical situation in which a 14-year-old girl became pregnant as a result of incest, which Tudor called a “Perfect example…Because I know people who are the product. A life is a life for me. That’s how it is. That is for me, that is my feeling.”
In a statement to HuffPost, Dixon elaborated that “Not everyone agrees with me that every life has value and we should have the courage, as [University of Michigan football coach] Jim Harbaugh put it, to let unborn children be born.… I know that. I’m not hiding from it.”
Dixon’s comments aren’t that far off the norm in a Republican field that has swung very far to the right in recent years.
Michigan Democratic spokesperson Roderikca Applewhaite explained:
“It’s not particularly shocking and it also doesn’t really differentiate her much from the rest of the Republicans she’s running against. They have all pushed pretty extreme anti-choice agendas.”
Far-right pandemic skeptic Garret Soldano, one of Dixon’s primary opponents, got in on the crazy earlier this year, saying that rape victims should recognize that “God put them in this moment” and the resulting child “may be the next president.”
Applewhaite continued:
“It’s just testament to the purity tests that have come to define the Republican Party at this point. In Michigan in particular, there’s been a real sprint to the right. The electorate isn’t necessarily there yet, but at the same time, those voters are about to line up to support these people in 11 days. So the candidates are dragging the party to the right and I expect the electorate to follow them.”
Jim Timmer, former executive director of Michigan’s Republican Party called Dixon’s statement “barbaric” and “insane” and said that it “show how far outside the mainstream the party has become.”
Timmer went on to explain that no past Republican candidate for the office “has ever taken the position that we’re going to take a 14-year-old girl and make her carry her rapist’s baby. Dixon is the first one to ever demand that that happen, and that’s barbaric and it’s insane.”
He added that it is a microcosm of the larger GOP’s issues right now too:
“Michigan is a microcosm of the insanity around the MAGA movement. We have what really amounts to unprecedented lawlessness within the Republican Party.”
