Very Reasonable Politician: Abortion is Causing California's Drought

California Assembly Member Shannon Grove is generating cascades of headlines over the last couple days for her very reasonable, well thought-out, scientific point of view that her state’s crippling drought is caused by abortion. She’s been defending that view to her constituents on Facebook, which, again — great plan.

Grove, who represents Kern County in central California, made the remarks last week at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week in Sacramento. They were first reported by RH Reality Check, and they are solid:

“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience, presumably referring to HB 2, the omnibus Texas abortion bill that included a 20-week ban based on junk science. “It rained that night. Now God has His hold on California.”

That’s right — it rained in 2013, and then God, as Wonkette points out, just kinda ruminated on Texas’s standing with Him for another couple years, continuing the drought, until He turned it into some floods that killed 31 people there and in Oklahoma.

What’s interesting about this is that five months ago, Grove released a video in which she blamed the drought on the Environmental Protection Agency, saying they’re releasing fresh water into the ocean to try to save a small fish:

That’s a frequent talking point on Fox News, and you can find that claim as far back as a 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial; it’s not a widely accepted idea, but it is, at least, a little less controversial than saying it’s the smiting hand of the Lord Almighty at work.

In her Facebook discourse yesterday, Grove backpedaled, sorta, while still making it crystal clear that yeah, she thinks God made this drought:

I believe —and most Americans believe —that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country. The Founders put God in the center of this nation by recognizing Him as a giver of our rights. Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions; we do know for sure that California’s water shortage crisis has been compounded by liberal politicians’ poor decisions – not properly managing our water resources and refusing to build water storage for decades.

Besides her fun views on God’s effect on your rain barrel, Grove is also against SB 277, which would make it harder for California parents to opt out of vaccinating their kids and then sending them to school to give everyone preventable diseases. She’s referring to it as the “forced vaccinations bill” and says it threatens religious freedom and personal choice.

Grove is scheduled to appear at a June 26 panel about how “poor policy decisions” made the drought worse. At least now we have a good sense of what she thinks that means.

Contact the author at [email protected].

Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 67B5 5767 9D6F 652E 8EFD 76F5 3CF0 DAF2 79E5 1FB6