Anti-choice GOP Rep. Tim Murphy urged his mistress to have an abortion
Yesterday, with blood still on the streets of Las Vegas following the country’s largest mass shooting in history, Congress got down to business. No, not gun control. Not an emergency aid bill for Puerto Rico. Not an overdue push to fund the now-expired CHIP program, so that nine million children can have health insurance. None of that. Instead, the esteemed House of Representatives wanted to remind women in America that they are all second-class citizens unworthy of making their own reproductive decisions. The House passed a ban on abortions past 20 weeks. For what it’s worth, the women seeking abortions at that stage generally are in life-or-death circumstances, whether it’s their own health which would fail if the pregnancy was carried to term, or the fetus would not survive either way. The House bill was openly based on junk science and they passed it anyway, because old white dudes be old-white-dudeing.
So it’s interesting – or perhaps not – that one of the Republican dudes who voted for this terrible f-cking bill was also revealed to be raging hypocrite today. Meet Tim Murphy, the Republican congressman for Pennsylvania’s 18th district (the suburbs of Pittsburgh). Tim Murphy is 65 years old and married. That didn’t stop him from banging a 32-year-old lady. And when that lady had a pregnancy scare, Representative Tim Murphy urged her to have an abortion. Classic GOP.
Congressman Tim Murphy admitted earlier in the month that he had an extramarital affair with Shannon Edwards, a 32-year-old forensic psychologist. Details about Murphy’s relationship with Edwards have been made public as part of her divorce proceedings — and documents obtained by the Post-Gazette demonstrate the extent of the Republican politician’s hypocrisy in regards to reproductive rights.
In a text exchange between the couple, Edwards called Murphy out for posting anti-abortion statements on Facebook. “And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options,” she wrote. Per the Post-Gazette: A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, “I get what you say about my March for life messages. I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
The Facebook post Edwards referenced in her text read: “The United States is one of just seven countries worldwide that permits elective abortion more than halfway through pregnancy (beyond 20 weeks). It is a tragic shame that America is leading the world in discarding and disregarding the most vulnerable.”
Murphy, it should be noted, is generally pretty popular in the anti-abortion realm. According to the Post-Gazette, he’s been endorsed by anti-abortion group LifePAC, is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, and has received praise by the Family Research Council. He’s also one of 181 other legislators who co-sponsored the 20-week abortion ban being voted on by the House on Tuesday evening.
Yeah, but it’s okay, right? Because he was a family-first Bible-thumper who said all the right things about abortion and women being sluts and he voted the exact way the pro-lifers wanted him to vote, so it’s totally fine that he banged a much younger woman and urged her to get an abortion when she had a pregnancy scare. You know it’s fine because he’s a white dude and it was probably her fault for getting pregnant in the first place, AMIRITE? The truth is, I’m only half joking – the actual true-believers and foot soldiers of the anti-choice movement will “forgive” him precisely because he votes their interests regardless of what he does and says in private. Those people don’t see it as hypocritical at all that on the same day we learned that he urged his mistress to have an abortion, he also voted to deny women in dire health circumstances to also seek legal abortions. That’s just business as usual.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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