Terri O’Neill, feminist professor and president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), said she believes women should have the option to abort their unborn babies even if they are considered children.
In an audio recording obtained by The Daily Wire, O’Neill expressed her disdain for the GOP platform, saying it was “quite clear” that Republicans are anti-women, citing GOP criminalization of abortions as evidence.
The audio featured a radio interview between O’Neill and KTTH’s Jason Rantz at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, where the two discussed whether Republican opposition to abortions is anti-women.
“Why do you think Republicans are against abortion?” Rantz asked O’Neill, to which O’Neill responded she thinks the GOP’s position is driven by religious mandates which state that “women really need to be controlled by the men in their family and that would include controlling the ability to control their own bodies.”
Rantz told O’Neill that as a Republican, he thinks the opposition to abortions “has to do with whether or not a fetus is considered a life.” He urged O’Neill to look at all sides of the perspective instead of simply assuming Republicans hate women.
O’Neill said she thinks it’s unfair that vasectomies are not being criminalized by religious leaders the way abortions have been. She deemed the whole discussion surrounding whether or not the fetus was a life as irrelevant.
“Of course it’s potential life. No woman doesn’t think it’s potential life,” she said. “They need to make these decisions for their families themselves, and the fact that it is potential life does not take away from the fact that it is women’s own ability to control their own bodies.”
She added that just as federal funding pays to treat men who have erectile dysfunction, they should also pay for women who want abortions and treat the two as equally deserving of federal funding.
“Of course we should cover Viagra and other forms of men’s health care, but on the same terms we should cover health care for women,” she said, adding that she blamed the “targeting” of women’s health care on religious mandate, saying, “Why are you being sex specific? Why are you not going after men’s healthcare on the same basis that you are going after women?”
Rantz responded that from the perspective of a lawmaker: allowing men to have healthy sexual intercourse is not the same as removing a child from its mother’s womb. But O’Neill did not seem to understand that logic, saying that if that were the case, men would be “forced to start making babies” the way women are “forced” to make babies.
“Of course it’s potential life. No woman doesn’t think it’s potential life.”
Terri O’Neill
“Take religion out of it and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” O’Neill said angrily.
O’Neill said she doesn’t care when life begins: “I don’t care.”
O’Neill said she had tried in the past to get pregnant and was unsuccessful.
“I lost it. I lost a whole potentiality of futures with every time that in-vitro fertilization failed,” she said.
Since its founding in 1966, NOW has built 550 chapters across the country and advocates for women’s abortion rights and other liberal feminist platforms. The organization has been criticized in the past for its political double standard when it refused to support a woman in her sexual harassment lawsuit against a Democratic politician, while calling for the resignation of a Republican politician who was accused of similar assault. The organization has also been criticized for supporting a discredited rape accusation for the sake of a political agenda.
“We are for women because we’ve always had men in leadership positions and in membership of the organization,” O’Neill said, adding, “We advocate for women’s issues but we are not exclusionary.”
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