Michigan’s GOP Nominee for Governor: Giving Birth After Rape Is ‘Healing’ for a 14-Year-Old

Tudor Dixon, Michigan’s Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for governor, said in an interview this week that she opposes rape exceptions to abortion bans—even for children and teens—because having a baby can be “healing” after the trauma of sexual assault.

When a Fox 2 Detroit anchor pressed her on why she would deny a 14-year-old rape victim an abortion, Dixon said it’s because she’s spoken to children born of rape. “The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” she said.

“We assume that that story is someone who was taken from the front yard, then returned,” she told anchor Roop Raj of young women who have been raped.

“Those voices—the babies of rape victims—that have come forward are very powerful when you hear their story and what the truth is behind that,” she added. “It’s very hard to not stand up for those people.”

Dixon is a former political commentator who believes without any evidence that the 2020 Election was stolen from Trump. Per Newsweek, in backing her candidacy, former president Donald Trump described her as a “Conservative Warrior” who will “stand up to the Radical Left as they try to indoctrinate our children and is ready to take on one of the worst Governors in the nation.”

That “worst governor” would be incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who’s currently ahead of Dixon in the polls by about five points and supports abortion rights.

The question of whether a state will force a child rape survivor to have an abortion, of course, is not a hypothetical one: A 10-year-old recently had to flee Ohio to get a legal abortion in Indiana, because Ohio’s abortion ban lacks exceptions for rape and incest. And just this week, Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas wrote about a Michigan judge blocking county prosecutors from enforcing the state’s 1931 abortion ban, which has exceptions only if the pregnant person’s life is at risk.

Everyone should have a right to abortion in this country—not just very young rape victims—but Republicans are now showing how far they’re willing to go to force people to give birth, even in the most horrifying of situations.