As Mike Pence has been traveling the country to tout his anti-choice record, on the heels of news that conservative Supreme Court justices intend to overturn Roe v. Wade, we thought it would be a good time to remind folks about his long, extreme anti-choice record.
Mike Pence has long believed that Roe v. Wade should be sent to “the ash heap of history.”
July 2016: “[If Trump is elected] we’ll see Roe vs. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs.”
February 2011: “I long for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history”
Mike Pence has compared abortion to atrocities like 9/11, the Holocaust, and slavery.
January 2002: “September the 11th left a scar on the American people, and the outrage that our countrymen have felt on September the 11th was an outrage born of violence against noncombatants, against the civilian. How many times on national television did we hear people lament the loss of innocent human life. Now we, who have stood lo these last 29 years against the wanton destruction of innocent human life, have a choice before us.”
September 2003: “Meghan Cox Gurdon, and I borrow from her essay now, wrote, ‘The Roe versus Wade anniversaries make me think of the last scene in Schindler’s List, the film about Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved a small number of Jews during World War II.’”
January 2008: “On this 35th anniversary of the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott, life is winning in America but life is still losing in Washington, D.C.”
Mike Pence once said he regretted he was “not a woman” because his anti-abortion arguments would hold more sway.
May 2003: “This is one of the nights in my life that I regret that I’m not a woman. I’m just another white, middle-aged Republican rising to speak on the issue of abortion.”
Mike Pence bragged about the Trump administration’s anti-choice record and his role in casting a tie-breaking vote to defund Planned Parenthood.
May 2018: “I’m pro-life and I don’t apologize for it and I couldn’t be more honored to serve shoulder to shoulder with the most pro-life president in my lifetime. President Donald Trump has taken one step after another to affirm this administration’s commitment to the sanctity of life.”
June 2019: “I was honored to cast the tie-breaking vote and to watch the President sign legislation that allowed states across the country to defund Planned Parenthood.”
Mike Pence touted the Trump administration’s success in appointing Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett as well as other anti-abortion federal judges.
February 2018: “This President has been busy appointing strict constructionists to our federal courts at every level including Justice Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court of the United States. These are men and women that will uphold the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution, and there’s more to come.”
December 2020: “[Trump] said, and he promised, ‘I will appoint judges that will be pro-life.’ And that’s just what he’s done…With yesterday’s confirmation of the judge who will fill the seat of the newest justice on the Supreme Court, President Trump has appointed more than 220 conservatives to our federal courts at every level, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.”
Mike Pence backed a personhood amendment to the Constitution that would define life as beginning at conception.
June 2007: “I believe that life begins at conception and destroying embryonic human life for the purpose of research is morally wrong.”
January 2011: Mike Pence co-sponsored a federal personhood amendment – the Life At Conception Act.
January 2002: “Roe v. Wade is bad law and Roe must go. We must enact a human life amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.”
As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence signed anti-choice legislation into law every year of his tenure.
New York Times: “Since his election as governor, in 2012, [Pence] has signed anti-abortion measures every year he has been in office.”
August 2012: “If the Legislature sends me pro-life legislation, I’ll sign it.”
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