Joni Ernst, the hog-castrating, gun-blasting Republican candidate for the Senate from Iowa is among one of the most extreme right-wingers running for election in Tuesday’s mid-terms.
It turns out that Joni has just as much animosity toward her own gender as she does toward men. Ernst has come out in support of a “personhood” amendment to the Constitution similar to a measure she supported in the Iowa Senate in 2013. Personhood measures such as this one would declare that a fertilized egg is a person and grant it the same rights and legal protections as a conscious, sentient fully-formed human being.
The intent is to not only do away with abortion outright, but also many of the most effective forms of birth control, because Ernst and her extremist cohorts believe that life begins at conception. Since some forms of birth control work by preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall they would become illegal, and opening the door for any woman using them to be potentially charged with manslaughter or murder.
Ernst defended her vote by saying that it “is simply a statement that I support life,” in a recent debate with her Democratic opponent, Bruce Braley.
In an interview with the editorial staff at the Sioux City Journal Ernst attempted to downplay her vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the state constitution by using the same sort of argument that it was a symbolic vote for a measure that could not pass while saying that she would support a similar proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“I will continue to stand by that. I am a pro-life candidate, and this has been shaped by my religious beliefs through the years,” she said. “So I support that.”
In the debate Ernst said:
“If you look at any sort of an amendment at the federal level … they come together through consensus. And, honestly, we don’t have a consensus. It would take two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate to even pass a proposed amendment, and then it would have to be ratified by three-quarters of our states’ legislatures. We don’t have that consensus at the federal level.”
Braley responded:
“Senator Ernst, I respect your faith. I have my own faith that is very deep and personal to me. But let’s be clear: The Cedar Rapids Gazette did a fact-check on the amendment that you introduced and said it would do all the things that I said it would — that it would ban forms of contraception, it would prevent people from getting in vitro fertilization, and you personally said that doctors who performed those procedures under your bill should be prosecuted.”
The video below is from her interview with the Sioux City Journal editors.
