Illyse Hogue got her time in the spotlight this summer during the Democratic National Convention when she insisted that aborting her unborn child was “overwhelmingly positive” and “the best decision” for her.
This week, Hogue, the president of NARAL, sat down with the liberal New York Magazine to bash Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and pro-lifers, labeling both as misogynists whose ultimate goal is to control women.
Hogue’s NARAL is one of the most radical pro-abortion groups in the U.S. NARAL opposes basically all abortion regulations and restrictions up to birth and openly attacks groups that offer pregnant women alternatives to abortion. NARAL is the same group that attacked Doritos for airing a Super Bowl commercial that “humanizes fetuses.”
Ignoring what she knows to be true, that the pro-life movement works to defend the rights of unborn babies, Hogue claimed that the real goal of the pro-life movement is to subjugate women.
“It’s not about abortion, it’s about sexually empowered women,” Hogue said. “It’s about the idea that women are allowed to have sex outside of procreation. But it has served the other side very well to make it about abortion.”
Pro-abortion journalist Susan Rinkunas, who conducted the interview, wrote:
No method of contraception is 100 percent effective, not even sterilization, and six in ten women seeking abortions already have kids. “It’s not as though there are bad girls who have abortions and good girls who have families,” she says. “So who are we talking about? We’re talking about women who have sex. Pregnancy is sometimes an offshoot of sex. And women, by nature, pay the price for that.”
Then, Hogue and Rinkunas puzzled over why so many women are pro-life. Rinkunas told Hogue that she couldn’t understand why so many women want to “restrict” their own “reproductive health.” Not once in the interview did Hogue or Rinkunas mention babies in the womb, or consider that a pregnancy always involves a second human being.
“I think it’s really intense when you’re raised surrounded by that mentality to challenge it, and we forget that,” Hogue told Rinkunas. “Think about the Mormons who walk away from intense Mormonism. You have to be prepared to lose everything you know — your church, your family.”
She continued: “It’s about patriarchy and a woman’s role in the family. That’s what the biblical teaching is. The abortion piece is what has allowed them to use stigma around sexualized women to keep people quiet about it. It’s an ingenious strategy if you take a step back.”
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Her statements are insulting to women and to the pro-life movement as a whole. Women are some of the most active, passionate advocates for the rights of unborn babies. Groups like Feminists for Life, Susan B. Anthony List and others argue that abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women and their children. And by linking abortion to religion, Hogue ignores the millions of non-religious pro-lifers who use scientific facts and logic to argue that human beings in the womb deserve the same right to life as everyone else.
Hogue later made another bogus claim, while attacking Trump’s paid maternity leave plan:
“We never want women to terminate a pregnancy that they want because they don’t think they’re going to get the resources they need to support a family. We see our opponents not only voting to ban abortion or limit women’s choices, but also cutting nutritional assistance for kids. When I look at our full mission, it maps really clearly on what I see as the hypocrisy of the other side.”
Yet, NARAL is openly attacking pro-life pregnancy centers that offer women and their babies these resources for free – resources that most abortion clinics don’t offer, especially not for free. In California, Hogue’s radical group even managed to convince lawmakers to force pregnancy centers to promote abortion or face hefty fines.
NARAL opposes informed consent laws, bans on sex-selection abortions that protect unborn girls from discrimination, parental consent for minors who want to have an abortion, late-term abortion bans and other common-sense legislation.
NARAL’s track record shows that its purpose is not to advocate for a pregnant woman’s “right to choose”; Hogue’s key mission is pushing more abortions.
