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Ted Cruz Has No Idea How Pregnancy Works

The Texas senator refuses to acknowledge that pregnancy can be dangerous or that medication abortion can save lives

Jessica Valenti
GEN
Published in
3 min readSep 4, 2020

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Ted Cruz. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

I should have been sleeping late Wednesday night; instead, I paced around my apartment fuming. I had just come across a tweet from Sen. Ted Cruz about the GOP’s attempt to have the Food and Drug Administration ban medication abortion. Republicans want the agency to classify what’s colloquially known as the abortion pill as “an imminent hazard to the public health” and remove it from the market.

My anger wasn’t borne out of surprise: The GOP has been trying to use the pandemic as a way to roll back women’s rights since March, when states tried to classify abortion clinics as “nonessential” as a way to shut them down during quarantine. And while medication abortion usually accounts for almost 40% of abortions in America, the use of the medicine has spiked during the pandemic — likely because women feel safer ending their pregnancies at home during a pandemic.

What was shocking, however, was that in his zeal to urge the FDA to ban abortion medication, Cruz tweeted, “Pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness, and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease.” Tell that to the more than…

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Jessica Valenti
GEN
Writer for

Feminist author & columnist. Native NYer, pasta enthusiast.