- James Currie/Wikimedia Commons
Dennis Byrne sets the record straight in his op-ed column in Tuesday’s Tribune.
“Democrats and a torrent of commentators, here and elsewhere,” he writes, “now are using [Todd] Akin to promote the canard that mainstream Republicans agree with Akin’s view that all abortions, even those in cases of rape and incest or to save the mother’s life, must be banned.”
Akin, Byrne reminds us, is the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri who “moronically said rape victims can will away a rape-conceived pregnancy.”
Mainstream Republicans don’t agree, says Byrne. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, “only 22 percent of Republicans say an abortion should be illegal in all cases.” The rest disagree with Akin.
It’s a telling statistic that allows us to marvel at Byrne’s ability to miss the forest for the trees. The 22 percent include the Republicans’ presumptive vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, and the authors of the abortion plank in the Republican platform. The plank reads: