Marco Rubio Doubles Down, Promises Glenn Beck He Will Ban Abortion As President

August 17, 2015 By Manny Schewitz

The Republican establishment has been trying to work their way back from the lunatic fringes on social issues. After two resounding defeats in back-to-back presidential elections and the rise of the Tea Party in the 2010 election, there is little doubt that the GOP leadership has sent out a number of memos asking candidates to tone down the rhetoric on things like abortion or gay marriage, and focus their message on things like the economy instead.

As an example, Ohio governor John Kasich has done a great job of managing to avoid sounding too liberal for his party, and reassuring social conservatives that he still cares about the issues they care about, even if the Supreme Court has spoken. Even Donald Trump with his rabidly anti-immigrant campaign has acknowledged that Planned Parenthood isn’t worth shutting down the government over, and that he supports allowing abortion under some circumstances. The same can’t be said for most of the rest of the Republican field who are desperately courting the rabidly anti-abortion/anti-birth control religious right. Just this weekend, Mike Huckabee stated that in the case of a 10-year-old rape victim in Paraguay, he still wouldn’t support allowing her to have an abortion because “every life matters.” Not to be outdone, Marco Rubio called in to Glenn Beck’s show this morning and doubled down on his own statements about abortion, just to make sure voters knew that he was the most anti-abortion candidate of them all.

“I believe a human being is entitled to life, irrespective of the circumstances in which that human being was conceived and so forth,” the Florida Republican said. “Now I recognize that other people don’t hold that view and in order to save lives in this country, I have supported bills that had to have exceptions in them, and I know a lot of people who are pro-life but support exceptions because they feel it goes too far.”

“I personally feel very, very strongly that every human life is entitled to the protection of our laws,” he continued. “If we as a society start deciding which lives we’re going to protect and which lives we’re not, we’ve put ourselves on a very slippery, dangerous slope. I actually think in a hundred years or so, or less, future generations are going to look back at this time in history and say that it’s really unbelievable that so many unborn human beings, their lives were ended simply because they didn’t have a birth certificate, couldn’t hire a lawyer, didn’t vote, or we couldn’t see them yet.” (Source)