Day late, dollar short: Clinton resurrects widely discredited Brett Kavanaugh lie

“I want to be sure we’re all clear about something that Brett Kavanaugh said in his confirmation hearings last week. He referred to birth-control pills as ‘abortion-inducing drugs,’” the self-proclaimed anti-Trump resistance queen said on social media. “That set off a lot of alarm bells for me, and it should for you, too.”

She added, “Kavanaugh didn’t use that term because he misunderstands the basic science of birth control—the fact that birth control prevents fertilization of eggs in the first place. He used that term because it’s a dog whistle to the extreme right. When Kavanaugh called birth control ‘abortion-inducing drugs,’ he made it clear that safe and legal abortion isn’t the only fundamental reproductive right at grave risk if he is confirmed. Access to birth control is, too.”

The problem with Clinton’s rant is that it’s predicated on an outright lie, which was spread first by the office of Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings last week.

As we explained here, the judge’s remarks about contraception weren’t a statement of his own position. He said “abortion-inducing drugs” in the context of explaining the legal position taken by litigants in a case.

Catholic hospitals, universities, and advocacy groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring employers to offer employees contraception coverage. The monetary penalties included in the law’s contraception opt-out represented a burden on their faith, the groups argued.

This argument was rejected in 2014 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where Kavanaugh served as a judge at the time. Kavanaugh, himself a Roman Catholic, said in his dissent that the groups should have been given a hearing.

Fast forward to the Supreme Court hearings last week. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked Kavanaugh: “Can you tell this committee about that case and your opinion there?”

The judge responded, “That was a group that was being forced to provide a certain kind of health coverage over their religious objection to their employees, and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the question was first, was this a substantial burden on the religious exercise? And it seemed to me quite clearly it was.”

He added, “It was a technical matter of filling out a form, in that case with – that – they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were – as a religious matter, objected to.”

It’s clear as day that Kavanaugh was not explaining his thoughts on contraception. He was referring to the argument presented by the plaintiffs in the case, who held that certain forms of contraception were abortifacient or potentially abortifacient.

To claim he was “dog whistling” his intention to block access to birth control is a damned lie, plain and simple.

The funny thing here is: Clinton’s attempt this week to “resist” Kavanaugh is a day late and a dollar short (tweet-by-committee will do that). Harris’ lie about Kavanaugh has been aptly picked apart not just by conservative publications, but also by the Washington Post, and PolitiFact, which went a little too easy on her.

Say what you will about Harris, but at least her office had the imagination and gumption to create a hugely popular lie from whole cloth. Clinton, on the other hand, is stumbling in like a drunk several days late, after the Kavanaugh lie has already been discredited and discarded by both sides of the news media. Seeing a former presidential candidate scrounge for a resistance-popular senator’s discarded scraps is pitiful. It also highlights perfectly how Clinton managed to lose the White House in 2016 to a former game show host.