For the last year or so, through one cable news appearance after another, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has built something of a brand as a “moderate” on abortion Republican, in which she insists she’s “pro-life” while nonsensically differentiating herself from her caucus’s “pro-life” stance. Mace has long called for a nonexistent “middle ground” on abortion, suggesting that expanded access to birth control and rape exceptions (that can be unhelpful in reality) are a good enough compromise for the government taking away women’s bodily autonomy.
In a Monday morning stop at The View, Mace’s central arguments quickly fell apart once she faced light scrutiny from Whoopi Goldberg—who has been open about her own abortion story—which anti-abortion politicians rarely encounter on cable news. (Granted, Goldberg barely had to say much to do a better job than most anchors.) The topic came up when co-host and former Trump White House communications aide Alyssa Farah Griffin embarrassingly thanked Mace for her “voice of moderation” in Congress and pointed out Mace’s criticisms of the Republican party’s stance on abortion. In September, Mace, who again, is proudly “pro-life,” said Republicans “cannot be assholes to women.”
In response, Mace referenced her experience surviving sexual assault and the importance of not placing victims “in a position where they have to decide to have an abortion or not.” Members of her party, she said, “have to find a balance to show we’re pro-life but we care about women, and find that balancing act.” Mace then suggests we find a middle ground by determining a gestational limit at some point in the second trimester, and says Congress has done “nothing” to “ensure we have greater access to birth control.”
At this point, Goldberg interjects to politely call bullshit. “No law says you have to have an abortion. There’s no law on the books that says you have to have an abortion,” she said, “Why am I being held to someone else’s religious belief?” Goldberg then asked Mace, “Do you want the government telling you how to raise your family?” to which Mace stammered, “I don’t want the government, but, but...” Ultimately, despite trying to distance herself from anti-abortion extremists, Mace whipped out the Republican party’s go-to talking points: lying about Democrats supporting abortion up until birth, supposedly around nine months, which doesn’t happen. “At some point, that baby… deserves the right to life,” she told Goldberg, before randomly invoking the issue of taxpayer funding for abortion care: “You don’t want the government in the room with the doctor and the woman, but those who want the government to pay for it [have] the government in the room with the doctor and the woman. So you can’t have it both ways.”
Of course, taxpayer funding for abortion—which is very normal for any health service—isn’t even being discussed; Mace is just grasping at straws as Goldberg confronts her on the flawed notion. The Congresswoman follows up her flaccid talking point on government funding with an abject lie: “Right now, all the states have the right to do whatever they want. In California and New York, it’s all the way up until nine months.” (Quick fact check: California prohibits abortion after what the state defines as fetal viability, at which point, abortion is prohibited unless it’s to save the pregnant person’s life or severe risks to their health; New York maintains similar laws. Fetal viability—the point when the fetus can supposedly survive outside the womb, appraised by lawmakers as around 24 weeks—is complicated and not at all as arbitrary as politicians make it out to be. But all of this is to say: Mace is not being truthful.) Griffin at some point uselessly chimes in that an anti-abortion stance isn’t “just a belief, actually” but is scientifically determined.
Goldberg unequivocally shuts this down. It’s a breath of fresh air considering how cable news anchors and Democratic politicians often seem at a loss for how to respond to Republicans who spew this nonsense: “Let’s stop that,” Goldberg said. “No one, no one, no one, no doctor, no hospital, no one, will take a baby at nine months for an abortion. I’m telling you this.” But Mace presses on, anyway, name-dropping Republicans’ favorite boogeymen (“Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden”) and accusing them of refusing to specify their chosen gestational limit for abortion.
The rest of the conversation descends into indiscernible nonsense from Mace, who pivots to framing Democrats as the ones who are harmful to pregnant rape victims because of their supposedly lax-on-crime stances that will ostensibly let rapists run free. It’s actually head-spinning bullshit and pure desperation from someone backed into a corner—crime policy quite literally has nothing to do with what Mace and Goldberg are talking about.
Goldberg doesn’t entertain her: “I also am pro-life. I want everybody to have a safe life. I want them to be safe and do all the things that they should be able to do,” The View co-host said. “But when it comes to what is best for my family and I, why isn’t that my choice and my doctor’s choice without bringing anyone else in?” Just before the segment wraps, she also returns to Mace’s nonsense about coverage of abortion care: “By the way, just because I’m poor doesn’t mean the government doesn’t have a responsibility to me as well.”
It’s a particularly insufferable interview from Mace, who has long been insufferable to listen to on this issue anyway. But nonetheless, it’s an important segment as it exposes that beneath Mace’s facade of moderation is just more of her party’s typical anti-abortion extremism.