Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry gave a rambling speech to the National Right To Life Committee’s convention this morning boasting of the radical anti-choice legislation that he signed as governor to claim that he would be the most “pro-life” of all the GOP presidential candidates.
Channeling Scott Walker, Perry boasted of a law he signed in Texas requiring women seeking an abortion to first undergo a sonogram and another banning abortion procedures after 20 weeks of pregancy, saying, “I know it works. On my iPad there’s that 20-week picture of my first grandbaby, and her mother understands now the most preciousness of life.”
“That was one of the tools we used in protecting women’s health, in being able to say that that is a very important date, if you will, that 20-week period where we outlawed abortion in the state of Texas,” he said.
Perry added later in his speech that abortion rights opponents must react to “those who live with those scars of abortion” with “healing and acceptance,” which he contrasted with President Obama’s “divisiveness” on abortion rights.
“For six and a half years, we have had a president who has used divisiveness as a tool for his political advantage,” he said. “He’s advertised in the battleground states that Republicans are a threat to women’s health. It’s time we had a president who transcends petty politics, who heals this nation, who brings us together, who can change truly this culture that we see in America today and do it through love, do it through tolerance, do it through healing.
“Because this is the most important truth: As long as Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, the only way to stop abortion is one pregancy at a time, one woman at a time, one heart at a time.”
Perry specified that he would help unite America by making sure that Roe v. Wade is overturned, promising that he wouldn’t nominate “squishy” judges to the federal courts. “If I’m the president of the United States and have the opportunity to put individuals on the United States Supreme Court, they will not be squishy. They will be individuals who understand what the constitution says. They will be individuals who understand what the 10th Amendment says.”
