GOP Senate Candidate Thinks Young, ‘Pro-Choice’ Women Are Stupid
In new audio from 2023, Tim Sheehy, who’s running to oust incumbent Democrat Jon Tester in the U.S. Senate, mocked "young women" for only wanting to talk about abortion, calling them "indoctrinated" and single-issue voters.
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics 2024 Election
In one of the most competitive and high-stakes Senate races in the country, businessman Tim Sheehy is running to oust incumbent Montana Democrat Jon Tester. Sheehy, an unrepentant anti-abortion extremist, has a record of putting his foot in his mouth. In July, he compared himself to a falsely accused rapist (???) after Tester criticized him for his lack of qualifications, and, at the Montana Senate debate last week, he said we need abortion bans in order to protect the next, unborn Albert Einstein (I repeat: ???). Yet, in newly unearthed audio from a campaign event in 2023, Sheehy still managed to top himself.
In the audio, first reported by the Daily Montanan and independently reviewed by Jezebel, Sheehy disparages young women voters—specifically, those ages 19 to 30—for caring about abortion rights, and repeats Donald Trump’s heinous lie that abortion includes the execution of born, living babies. “Young people, listen up, they’ve been indoctrinated for too long. We don’t even try to talk to them anymore,” Sheehy says. “I sat with a group of younger folks a couple of months ago talking about, just, various issues. And one of them was life, because of course young women between the age of 19 and 30, abortion is their Number One concern. That’s all they want to talk about. They are single-issue voters.”
“And it’s all about pro-choice, pro-choice. ‘Republicans are pro-life. They want to take my rights away and lock me up and throw me in prison.’ And I said, well, are you familiar with what the Democrats’ position is on abortion? ‘Yeah, they’re pro-choice. They’re protecting women,’” he continued. “It’s called murder. That is the position of the American Democrat Party.”
Republicans have been inexplicably doubling down on their “Democrats are executing babies” talking point this election cycle. In Florida, Sen. Rick Scott (R), who’s also facing a competitive reelection race, has repeatedly lied that Democrats “want to have abortion up until the moment before a baby, a nine-month term, by crushing a baby’s skull,” and that they would “allow a healthy baby born alive to just cry itself to the death in the corner by starving itself to death.” It’s nonsense, and also painfully ironic after the first two confirmed maternal deaths caused by abortion bans were reported by ProPublica last month.