GREENFIELD, IOWA — As the 2016 Republican primary candidate field winds their way through the summer, each one is jockeying for position in the polls. It’s during the primary season that candidates traditionally espouse the most rigid of core party principles, in an attempt to woo their base. For Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his campaign, a decision was made to play to the evangelical Christians of the religious right when Cruz came out in support of a constitutional amendment that would define life as beginning at fertilization. The amendment is backed by a right-wing organization known as Georgia Right to Life, and Cruz pledged that he would support such an amendment were he to win his party’s nomination and the general election next fall.
For many outsiders, this move seems to doom Cruz’s campaign. In 2012, the Democratic Party was able to define Republican policies on reproductive health from abortion to birth control as a “War on Women,” and it was seen as one of many factors that kept the GOP out of the White House. The Texas Republican’s decision to back such an amendment would seem to put him at odds with a much more moderate general electorate. Cruz, however at a campaign stop in Greenfield, Iowa this week doubled-down on his support of the amendment, and took his rhetoric another step further.
“It is said that in the 1960’s and 70’s a sexual revolution was born,” Cruz told the audience he was speaking to in front of a women’s health clinic, “and out of that revolution came things like marriage equality and Roe vs. Wade.” Cruz told his audience the sexual revolution “set a dangerous precedent that we should allow women to be as free with their sexuality and reproductive choices as we men are” and that “the end result has been women taking birth control willy-nilly and having abortions all over town, sometimes three in a week from [he has] heard from some folks.”
Cruz told the crowd that if he was elected president he’d “turn back the clock” on all the “misguided sexual autonomy” and “get the country back into the good graces of God” by signing the amendment that would essentially make certain forms of birth control illegal, such as the so-called Plan-B or “morning after” pill. “We’ve had our sexual revolution; now it’s time for…The Inquisition,” Cruz said. He took a breath then reiterated, “It’s going to take an inquisition. A sexual inquisition. We will not be able to rest until we are relatively assured about the status and activities of every vagina in the land.”
“We must ask ourselves if we truly trust women with their vaginae,” Cruz said while adding, “I mean, it’s not like these are guns we’re talking about here. We know we can and have to under the strict edict of the Second Amendment trust every single person no matter how old, no matter what mental state they are in, no matter what violent crimes they have committed in the past, to have a gun. But I submit to you that nothing is more dangerous than a woman in control of her own vagina!”
Cruz said that he “will not rest” until he is “reasonably assured as to the moral standards being implemented by all genitalia everywhere.” When asked if he was only concerned about pregnancy as a sexual morality issue, Cruz bellowed a laugh from deep within his body. “Of course not, silly lady,” he told the male reporter, “I will also be doing no-knock raids, personally, to make sure no men are laying with men, and if women are laying with women, I will make sure they are being properly filmed…for science.”
“America was not built on the notion of freedom for everyone,” Cruz said, “it was built on the notion of white, landowning men knowing more than poor people, women and minorities. With your help, I will get us back to a time when a woman knew she didn’t need to worry her little female brain about things like voting or sexual autonomy. They just need to make sure the slippers and pipe are ready when we get home, and we men will take care of all the messy details like when to pay the mortgage and when to let you have control of your pussy. God Bless America, God Bless Me, and God Bless Ted Cruz!”
