The news about Republican House member Scott DesJarlais just gets worse and worse. As it turns out, not only did he cheat on his wife with a patient and pressured his pregnant patient-girlfriend to have an abortion, he cheated on his wife six times, with patients and co-workers, prescribed drugs to one of his patient girlfriends, and successfully advocated for his own wife to have an abortion.
For a 'family values' and 'pro-life' conservative, that is quite a record.
The great irony in all this, of course, is that Representative DesJarlais was reelected, despite all of the things he's done, while Republican Senate and House candidates (Akin, Mourdock, Walsh, and Koster) lost their races not for what they did but what they said (inflammatory, insensitive, and just plain factually incorrect things about abortion and/or rape).
In this election season, words spoke louder than actions.
Is there anything to be learned from the utter hypocrisy of Representative DesJarlais? He could simply be a shameless liar, peddling family values while not much caring to live them himself.
Alternatively, considering abortion specifically, one could see here an example of the phenomenon of someone being pro-life except in their own self-justified situation:
Now, the most likely explanation for Representative DesJarlais' behavior is that he is a narcissist and a sociopath. Still, the "it's okay for me in my situation" phenomenon recommends a type of strategy for the pro-choice movement, which is to get pro-lifers to put themselves in the shoes of a woman/family that might consider having an abortion. I think pro-choicers tend to win the argument when getting down to concrete and complicated real-life situations. For how horrible DesJarlais is as a person, his explanations for why his wife had two abortions are not all that different from those given by most women.
Links:
Article in the Washington Post (November 15, 2012): Rep. DesJarlais admitted to affairs with two patients during divorce trial
Fact sheet created by the Guttmacher Institute (August 2011) that describes the most common reasons why women have abortions: Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States
For a 'family values' and 'pro-life' conservative, that is quite a record.
The great irony in all this, of course, is that Representative DesJarlais was reelected, despite all of the things he's done, while Republican Senate and House candidates (Akin, Mourdock, Walsh, and Koster) lost their races not for what they did but what they said (inflammatory, insensitive, and just plain factually incorrect things about abortion and/or rape).
In this election season, words spoke louder than actions.
Is there anything to be learned from the utter hypocrisy of Representative DesJarlais? He could simply be a shameless liar, peddling family values while not much caring to live them himself.
Alternatively, considering abortion specifically, one could see here an example of the phenomenon of someone being pro-life except in their own self-justified situation:
During the trial, DesJarlais said the first time he urged his ex-wife to get an abortion, it was because she was on medication on which she wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. The second time, he said it was because “things were not going well between us and it was a mutual decision.” Both abortions occurred before the couple was married in 1995. (Source: The Washington Post)Many pro-choice accounts describe this kind of "okay for me, but not for thee" behavior among people who are ostensibly pro-life.
Now, the most likely explanation for Representative DesJarlais' behavior is that he is a narcissist and a sociopath. Still, the "it's okay for me in my situation" phenomenon recommends a type of strategy for the pro-choice movement, which is to get pro-lifers to put themselves in the shoes of a woman/family that might consider having an abortion. I think pro-choicers tend to win the argument when getting down to concrete and complicated real-life situations. For how horrible DesJarlais is as a person, his explanations for why his wife had two abortions are not all that different from those given by most women.
Links:
Article in the Washington Post (November 15, 2012): Rep. DesJarlais admitted to affairs with two patients during divorce trial
Fact sheet created by the Guttmacher Institute (August 2011) that describes the most common reasons why women have abortions: Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States
Comments
Gebelik