St. Louis Post Dispatch: Editorial: Shameless trans ad shows how low they'll go to trick voters on abortion rights
By the Post Dispatch Editorial Board
Elsewhere in today’s opinion section is an essay by Michael A. Wolff, retired chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, explaining the various deceptions being used to win support for Missouri Amendment 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot. This is the ballot measure attempting to reimpose our state’s previous, draconian restrictions on abortion rights that the state’s voters lifted via referendum just two years ago.
As Wolff notes, those deceptions include a section in the amendment that says it would outlaw transgender medical procedures for minors. Two problems: One, that issue has nothing to do with abortion rights; and, two, such procedures are already illegal in Missouri. Ballot candy, anyone?
Wolff’s piece does a fine job of charting the sheer mendacity behind the selling of Amendment 3 to the Missouri public. But to truly grasp the depths of that effort, readers should consider a recent television ad in support of the amendment that is, in a word, shameless. It should be required viewing for anyone who isn't yet clear on just how low this campaign will go.
Using the flickering visuals and ominous voice overs typical of political scare-ads, the commercial warns of “children under the knife” and “irreversible sex-change surgeries on kids.”
“That’s the goal of the trans extremists,” intones the narrator, amid closeups of children’s distressed faces. “Amendment 3 stops them. A ‘yes’ vote will protect our children from sex-change surgeries.”
No, it won’t, because that’s already illegal and no one is doing it. But anyone who doesn’t know that will come away from this ad thinking junior high schoolers are stampeding toward sex-change clinics and that only voting for this amendment will keep them out.
Of course, "liberal New York money" makes the obligatory appearance. And to make sure we know what kind of people are behind this “trans agenda,” the ad shows us two dancing, leering drag queens in big wigs and gaudy makeup. Seriously. The image is nothing less than the cartoonish leveraging of bigotry and hatred in service to a lie.
What the ad doesn’t contain is a single word about banning abortion rights. Any reasonable viewer who didn’t know better would think stopping an apparent epidemic of sex-change operations on kids is the whole point of Amendment 3 — rather than just a diversionary tactic its creators dreamt up in their zeal to deny women the right to their own reproductive decisions.
We wish we could say this commercial was the spawn of someextremist fringe element outside the mainstream of the abortionrights debate (it certainly comes off that way), but, no.
The ad specifies it’s paid for by the “Her Health, Her Future” PAC, the main political action committee pushing Amendment 3, with Missouri First Lady Claudia Kehoe identified as its treasurer. In other words, this putrid lie-fest comes from the very top of Missouri’s political power structure.
The ad must be seen to be believed. We’ve posted a screen grab version of the video on the opinion section of STLtoday.com. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a link anywhere to a clean copy of the original video; even the video page on the PAC’s website is empty.
Perhaps they’re embarrassed by it. They should be.
Reasonable people can debate abortion rights, but that’s not what the purveyors of Amendment 3 are doing. Instead, they’re trying to scare and lie their way to passage of the measure. That’s a fair issue for Missouri voters to consider as they make their choices on Nov. 3.
Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_e270fde9-72b8-441f-81e4-e7f2769b3310.html
