Shortly after representing the United States in the Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles took a position on one of the most divisive social issues in America.
Biles, often cited by conservatives as an example of the wonders of adoption, came out as “very pro-choice” on Monday on Instagram, where she has nearly 7 million followers. She said her experience in the foster care system wasn’t easy and that the system was broken.
She later clarified on Twitter that she didn’t mean that she supports aborting unborn children rather than putting them in foster care, but she wants pregnant women to have the choice as to whether or not their child lives or dies.
DO NOT misconstrue my words. That is not at all what I implied. I did NOT say I support to abort rather than to put them through the foster care system. What I did imply is that you should not control someone elses body/decision. Let’s be real what you care about is control… https://t.co/IWVz0ydpXi
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) August 10, 2021
It’s an unfortunate revelation and yet another example of why conservatives need more cultural influence.
There are plenty of celebrities expressing left-of-center thoughts, and while many conservatives don’t care what they have to say, we’re not their target audience. Most people aren’t thinking deeply about abortion daily — or ever. Voters don’t even know who or what they’re voting for most of the time. The fact that millions of fans may listen uncritically to the pro-abortion opinions of Simone Biles and others should concern us.
The general public, frankly, doesn’t know much about abortion or abortion law in the U.S. If it did, we likely wouldn’t have more than 62% of the country supporting Roe v. Wade, voters split on leaving abortion law to the states, and only about 65% of the country wanting to ban elective abortion after the first trimester.
That’s why it’s important to have celebrities such as Kanye West, Tim Tebow, and Nick Cannon, who have massive platforms and have spoken out against abortion over the years.
West grabbed headlines in his run for president by saying that the government should give people $1 million when they have a child and crying at the thought of Kim Kardashian potentially killing North West when she was in the womb. While $1 million is steep, it did, for a brief time, inject the idea of a baby bonus scheme into America’s political discourse — a pro-natal policy that could help reduce the abortion rate.
Both West and Cannon have accused the pro-choice side of harming the black community. Cannon called abortion “modern-day eugenics” in 2016 and said Planned Parenthood engages in “population control” and “genocide.”
And Tebow was in a television ad for the pro-life Focus on The Family during the Super Bowl.
People can write nuanced think pieces about why abortion is wrong, Roe v. Wade is a bad ruling, how to reduce the abortion rate in the country, and so on. However, if persuading the culture takes more people like Tebow, West, and Cannon stepping up and making statements against this terrible evil, so be it. People with massive platforms should use them to say killing the unborn is bad, and opposing such killings shouldn’t be controversial.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
