GA-GOV: Leaked Audio Shows GOP Candidate Agreeing That Women Should 'Prove' Rape To Access Abortion

Rick Jackson, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, appears to believe women should have to prove they were raped before being eligible for an abortion exception under the state’s six-week ban, according to leaked audio reviewed by HuffPost.

While speaking with a community member at an annual barbecue event in April, Jackson discussed his views on abortion, including the state’s current six-week abortion ban. The law only allows exceptions for victims of rape and incest, when the fetus is not able to survive outside of the womb, and when the life or health of a pregnant person is at risk.

Jackson, a billionaire Republican political donor, agreed with the community member who said “two wrongs don’t make a right” regarding rape victims accessing abortion care. Just a month before this conversation, Jackson supported abortion exceptions for rape or incest victims in a publicly shared questionnaire created by anti-abortion group the Georgia Life Alliance Committee, the state affiliate of the National Right to Life.

When the community member said she wanted to see “babies born no matter how they were conceived,” referring to rape, Jackson replied: “You still got life, it’s still a life.” He then agreed with her when she said a woman who says she was raped “needs to prove it” to be eligible for an exception under the state’s already-extreme abortion ban. The support to “prove” rape is a sentiment widely shared in anti-abortion circles, which believe unfounded claims that women use rape exceptions as loopholes to access abortion care.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leaked-audio-shows-gop-candidate-agreeing-that-women-should-prove-rape-to-access-abortion_n_6a0f1637e4b0bb04cec3cc88