A little no-name Utah politician is currently turning heads for his strange understanding of female biology. On Saturday, Salt Lake County Councilman Dave Alvord replied to a tweet from Vice President Kamala Harris about protecting reproductive rights and said that a fetus is not “a part of the body of a woman.”
“The umbilical chord [SIC] and placenta do not directly connect to the woman,” he tweeted. “The baby floats inside the woman. It is not about the woman’s body, it’s to kill then remove the baby’s body. It is done in greater proportion to black babies.” What does he think the umbilical cord connects to...an external power strip?
Alvord’s comments, while incredibly dumb, are not rare. People (mostly male politicians) being performatively obtuse about the uterus and its surrounding parts is an easy way to get anti-abortion donors and quickly cut an ad that shows just how much you’ll “fight for those babies.” And since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it’s only gotten worse.
Here is an incomplete list of the weirdest things politicians have said about reproductive biology, sex, and abortion, including whether ectopic pregnancies can be reimplanted and what “legitimate” rape can and cannot do to the body.
