MSNBC host Joe Scarborough made a comparison Tuesday between changing views on gun laws and the public’s shifting stance on abortion. He emphasized that as the science of fetal development improves with things like 3-D ultrasounds, opinions on abortion are changing.
"I think the culture is changing," MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell said on "Morning Joe" in regards to gun control. "Everyone can react to this new generation who are the post-Columbine generation of kids, and they don't want to live this way.”
Scarborough then compared his perception of the changing stance on gun laws to polling on banning abortion after 20 weeks.
"You are seeing poll numbers move on abortion for banning abortions after 20 weeks,” Scarborough said. “Why? Because for the past decade, younger Americans have been going in and they have been seeing 3-D imagery where they can look into the womb."
"If some activist said, ‘Your child is a lump,' I must tell you, I've had four kids, I've never once had a doctor go to me, ‘we've got your lump, let me show you your lump, look at your lump's profile,'" he said.
Scarborough talked about how he was able to tell through ultrasounds that his son Jack would have a different nose than he did.
"This is an example of science, technology changing that is going to change the politics of abortion," he emphasized. "This is an issue that culturally is going to change. Americans, younger voters are going to become more conservative on abortion because they see their child very early on in the womb."
He concluded by saying the same thing will happen with gun laws.
"The same thing's going to happen with guns. Your kids are watching other kids getting gunned down in schools. That's going to have an impact," he added.
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“Science is chasing politics in both those cases,” Michael Duffy, former Deputy Managing Editor of Time magazine, agreed.
Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, has spoken out on the issue of abortion in the past, even admitting in 2015 that “of all the areas where I think there is media bias, I think the greatest area is on this issue.”
He was speaking about the media’s reaction to undercover Planned Parenthood videos allegedly depicting trafficking in fetal tissue for profit.
“I think most reporters do the best job they can do and they try to be as fair as possible,” he explained. “But when it come to the issue of abortion, there is the greatest built-in bias. And it is completely cultural bias, it is unintended.”
“But if the roles were reversed," he said, “there is a group on the right doing what Planned Parenthood has done on the left and is described on the left, there would be Justice Department — there would be indictments already going down.”
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