“’I am totally against abortion. I think it’s a stain on our humanity that it’s legal right now,’ Kent told 21 Studios podcast, in an interview on the floor at CPAC in 2021.”
A new report from Rolling Stone details how far-right congressional candidate Joe Kent (WA-03) has, on multiple occasions, compared abortion to slavery. Kent, like Republicans across the country, is now trying to temper his extreme beliefs by scrubbing mentions of abortion from their websites and “softening” his language.
Read the full story here.
Key Points:
Rolling Stone: Washington Republican Softens Stance After Repeatedly Comparing Abortion to Slavery
Joe Kent, a GOP congressional candidate, called abortion “a stain on our humanity” comparable to slavery and segregation
By: Tessa Stuart | June 3, 2024
- Joe Kent — the far-right Republican congressional candidate who lost his race in a shocking upset two years ago — has some thoughts about abortion. Kent thinks that years from now we, as a society, will look back on the current debate over access to reproductive care in this country in horror and disbelief.
- None of that, however, is what Kent meant. “I am totally against abortion. I think it’s a stain on our humanity that it’s legal right now,” Kent told 21 Studios podcast, in an interview on the floor at CPAC in 2021.
- From there, he went on to compare legal abortion to American slavery: “I remember learning about slavery and learning about segregation and being amazed that there was a time in my parents’ life, who aren’t that much older, that segregation was a very real thing. I was like, ‘Man, that’s crazy that that happened in their lifetime.’ And then looking back two lifetimes from that, we had slavery. And I’m like, ‘Man, that’s insane — that my grandparents, their great grandparents, they grew up then.’ I think there’s going to be a time in our lives when we’re in our 60s or 70s where our kids come up to us, and they’re gonna be like, ‘So, it was OK with everybody that you could just go kill babies?’ I think that that’s coming very soon. I think abortion is absolutely evil in the way that it’s gone on.”
- During his last campaign for Congress, Kent made the slavery analogy more than once. In 2022, his opponent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, shared a screenshot in which a high school student DMed her to say that Kent had made a similar argument when visiting their school. The student wrote: “Joe Kent came to my high school and a student was curious and asked him about his thoughts on reproductive rights. He then compared it to slavery and segregation. My peers and I were wondering what the correlation was and how such heinous acts could be compared with rights for women. He told this to a room full of high school students and essentially sent the message [was] that we (girls and women), should not have rights to our own bodies.”
- As he began campaigning for election earlier this year, Kent sought to soften his position on abortion, posting on X, “Post Dobbs decision [abortion is] a state issue,” adding that he no longer supports a federal ban on abortion. Kent’s campaign manager, Flo Rossmiller, reiterated that stance in response to an email to Rolling Stone. “The Supreme Court has ruled that this is a state issue, and Joe Kent supports keeping it that way,” Rossmiller wrote.
Published: Jun 4, 2024 | Last Modified: Jun 7, 2024