Power

Indiana Gubernatorial Candidate: Pence’s “Extreme” Views Would Jeopardize Women’s Health

Indiana Republican Congressman Mike Pence decided early on in the 2012 presidential cycle that despite massive conservative support, he would prefer to run for governor instead.

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Indiana Republican Congressman Mike Pence decided early on in the 2012 presidential cycle that despite massive conservative support for a run for the White House, he would prefer to run for governor instead. Since he began dismissing calls to run for the GOP nomination, Pence has acted in Congress to block federal dollars from going to Planned Parenthood, and was the architect for insisting that women prove “forcible rape” to access government assistance for an abortion, in his quest to ban Medicaid funding for abortions in what few cases it could be used.

John Gregg, Indiana’s Democratic nominee for governor, is now using those votes to claim Pence is too “extreme” for the state, and that the congressman’s House votes show his true anti-woman agenda.

Via the Indy Star:

Gregg’s campaign is touting what Democrats have dubbed the “Pence Manifesto,” a collection of essays written by numerous people and published by the Indiana Policy Review in 1992, when Pence was president of the group. Gregg said the book, “Indiana Mandate, An Agenda for the 1990s,” demonstrates Pence’s “extremist” blueprint for the state.

“This manifesto says that contraception for unmarried couples is bad and destroys the American family,” Gregg said. “He says that safe sex by itself destroys the American family and the culture that goes with it.”

Gregg added, “He’s been an extremist all along, but he wants to hide from that record, and we want to compare and contrast and not let him get away from that record.”

So what sort of policy can be found in the “Pence Manifesto?”  Much of it revolves around the “myth of safe sex outside marriage,” according to Gregg.

“This myth has many ugly heads. It leads to abortion, pornography and the general denigration of women as objects to be had … ‘safely’ to be sure,” Gregg quoted Pence as saying.”His manifesto declares that giving women too many choices leads to promiscuity and that a physician’s judgment is not reliable and that safe sex outside of marriage is a myth,” Gregg told supporters.

Gregg declares himself to be an anti-choice Democrat who is against abortion as much as Pence is, but feels that the attacks on women’s health care and cutting off access to birth control go too far, and eliminate too many choices for women when it comes to avoiding unplanned pregnancies. His running mate, State Sen. Vi Simpson is considered unabashedly pro-choice, and her selection caused anti-choice activists to declare the Gregg campaign “joined at the hip” with Planned Parenthood.