Pennsylvania’s most vocal anti-abortion congressman, Tim Murphy, told his own girlfriend, Shannon Edwards, to have an abortion earlier this year when she told him she might be pregnant with their child.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published their wonderful scoop on Tuesday afternoon just weeks after news broke that “family values man” Murphy was having an extramarital affair with Edwards.
But wait, it gets better. A text message exchange was included among a series of documents obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one in which Murphy admits to Edwards that he doesn’t really believe in the “pro-life” messages he’s been promoting.
“You have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options,” Edwards texted.
“I get what you say about my March for life messages,” Murphy texted back. “I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
As Slate‘s Christina Cauterucci notes, even Murphy “doesn’t truly believe in the anti-abortion schlock his office disseminates.”
Murphy certainly isn’t the first Republican congressman to profess Family Research Council–approved “pro-life” propaganda publicly while applying a different set of standards to his own personal conduct.
In fact, Murphy is one of two Republican co-sponsors of the latest Republican legislative effort to restrict women’s access to abortion nationwide—the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, who was also recorded telling his 24-year-old mistress to have an abortion so “we can get on with our lives,” is also a co-sponsor of the bill.
- Staff
