‘Once the Fetus Is Out, Then They Don’t Give a Damn’: Joy Reid Slams White Evangelicals on Ab0rtion

Joy Reid said White evangelicals – who as a group largely oppose abortion – care more about fetuses than children.

Her remarks came hours after another mass shooting in the U.S., and two weeks after a school shooting that left three children and three adults dead. In response, liberals have demanded more gun control while many conservatives have resisted those calls.

On Monday’s edition of The ReidOut, the host cited a poll showing just 27% of White evangelicals support abortion rights in all or some cases. That’s well below most other religious demographics.

“Every other religious group other than Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) White evangelical protestants, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, you know, are at least 44% in saying, ‘No, ab0rtion should be legal,’” Reid noted to guest Jeff Sharlet. “You go through the Buddhists, the Universal Universalists, the White Catholics, even are at 62%. Right down there at the bottom are just these three groups.”

She stated White evangelicals hold more power than they should, considering their relative size as a voting bloc.

“And White evangelical protestants have disproportionate power in the United States,” Reid continued. “And they’re using that power to try to take away women’s liberty over their own body and to get more and more and more guns.”.

“The right-wing evangelicals call the left culture a death cult,” Sharlet responded. “And we call them a death cult sometimes too, right? I mean, they love guns, but really, it’s an innocence cult. This idea of the fetus is untouched by history. This is when we deny history, we deny the existence of race, and then we combine it with the gun, which is the force to protect the so-called purity, this White purity myth.”

Sharlet commented he had seen a flag featuring a fetus and a gun.

“This is the ultimate ideology that they’re preaching,” he said. “Those two things they experience [are] not at odds, but [are] reinforcing one another – the innocence of the child and the gun that protects it, which is terrifying.”

“One of the things I do find interesting, once the fetus is out, then they don’t give a damn,” Reid said. “They’re just like, ‘Then it can die. Then it can starve. We don’t care.’”

Reid’s remark echoed those of the late comedian George Carlin.

“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they?” he said in a 1996 HBO special. “They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own.”