Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Forced Birth Activist, Tweets Support for Iranian Women

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who has led Congress’ crusade against Planned Parenthood for the past decade and recently called the right for married couples to use birth control “constitutionally unsound,” tweeted her support on Monday for Iranian women’s rights.

“Women in Iran should be able to wear what they want without the fear of being killed for it,” the senator wrote, referring to ongoing protests in Iran following the death of a young woman who died in “morality police” custody after being arrested for wearing her hijab wrong.

Of course, Blackburn is right to support women in Iran—they should be able to wear whatever they want without fear of being arrested or beaten by police. But it’s wildly hypocritical to support women’s freedom in another nation while actively introducing and supporting legislation that has ended women’s rights to bodily autonomy in the United States.

Blackburn’s own website brags that she’s long been a leader in the fight against abortion rights, which has resulted in American women being forced to prove to doctors that they’re dying in order to receive lifesaving abortions. She supports making it “a federal crime to transport a minor across a state line to obtain an abortion”—even as a 10-year-old rape survivor had to travel out of state to get an abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. (The World Health Organization has found that pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading killer of girls 15 to 19, which is quite a bit older than the Ohio girl.)

As Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas wrote, during hearings to confirm Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court—its first Black woman justice ever—Blackburn railed against trans women’s rights in a truly vile speech. With her massive power and platform, Blackburn has done a lot more than most people in this country to support and uphold the white patriarchy, while giving Republicans the nice optics of having a woman behind many of these efforts.

Perhaps she supports freeing Iranian women of their compulsory hijabs so that they also may have the option to tease their hair and wear pearls while gutting other women’s bodily autonomy in the name of religious values.