DeSantis, Ramaswamy Slammed for ‘Using Wives’ Miscarriages to Defend Anti-Abortion Stance: “Monsters”

Republican contenders for president, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy, have come under fire for allegedly utilizing their wives' traumatic miscarriage experiences as justification for their virulent anti-abortion beliefs.

The topic was raised when the two Republican contenders attended the Family Leader Foundation Thanksgiving Forum, Meidas Touch Network reported. Together with Nikki Haley, the two candidates tried to establish a closer personal connection with the electorate at the Iowa Christian forum.

Referring to his wife Casey's first pregnancy loss, DeSantis opened up, “Unfortunately, we lost that first baby. And it was a tough thing because this is something that we had so much hope for…I think it showed me that, one, life has a long and winding road. Keep the faith. But it also told me, you know what, this is special. I’ve got to fight for these kids, and I’ve got to fight for all these kids.”

Ramaswamy chimed in a few minutes later to share his wife's account: “About three and a half months in, Apoorva woke up she said, ‘I’m bleeding’. She had a miscarriage. We lost our first child. And that was the loss of a life, it was our family’s loss.”

However, it is particularly repulsive to exploit their own miscarriage stories as justification for laws that prevent women from accessing reproductive healthcare. Their individual experiences do not represent the reality for the millions of pregnant women who will face excruciating health issues every year.

Women's rights advocate and NYT bestselling author feminist Jessica Valenti slammed the two GOP contenders as "misogynistic monsters" who exploited their wives' pain. Slamming Ramaswamy and DeSantis, she wrote, "Let’s be clear about what this was: These men, these two politicians, tried to soften their anti-abortion extremism using their wives’ bodies as shields. It’s the post-Roe version of 'as a father to daughters.' In the wake of the GOP’s massive election losses, Republican men are suddenly realizing that their extremism is costing them votes. And what better way to prove that they’re not misogynist monsters than to co-opt the stories of their female loved ones?"

In her Substack, she quoted 5 different women's experiences who were denied emergency care amid intense pregnancy complications due to abortion bans in the states. "Since DeSantis and Ramaswamy only seem to have empathy for women they know—and even that’s debatable—I wonder how they would feel if their wives were treated this way. Shamed and debased, denied basic healthcare. What would they do if they got that sobbing phone call? Because this is the world they’re building for the wives they claim to care about," she wrote.

She further slammed the two, saying, "Of course, we know that these men don’t have to worry about such things. Their wives will likely be just fine; they won’t be beholden to the laws their husbands pass or push. But the rest of us will be."