And it probably won’t cost him any votes. It has been discovered that Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend to get an abortion, in spite of the fact that, on the campaign trail, he has been loudly opposed to abortion for any reason.
A woman who asked not to be identified out of privacy concerns told The Daily Beast that after she and Walker conceived a child while they were dating in 2009 he urged her to get an abortion. The woman said she had the procedure and that Walker reimbursed her for it.
She supported these claims with a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a “get well” card from Walker, and a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check from Walker.
The woman said there was a $125 difference because she “ball-parked” the cost of an abortion after Googling the procedure and added on expenses such as travel and recovery costs.
Additionally, The Daily Beast independently corroborated details of the woman’s claims with a close friend she told at the time and who, according to the woman and the friend, took care of her in the days after the procedure.
The woman said Walker, who was not married at the time, told her it would be more convenient to terminate the pregnancy, saying it was “not the right time” for him to have a child. It was a feeling she shared, but what she didn’t know was that Walker had an out-of-wedlock child with another woman earlier that same year.
This won’t even cause a hiccup in his campaign. The thing to realize is that anti-abortion advocates aren’t actually so much anti-abortion as they are anti-women’s autonomy. This abortion was OK because a man blessed it. What would get them outraged is if a woman aborted a man’s unborn child without his permission. Permission granted by a man? Stomp that fetus!
His potential Republican colleagues are probably ready to high-five him and call him a moral exemplar. Even his record of domestic violence doesn’t trouble the Republican base, because that’s simply a man exhibiting his dominion over his wife. Perfectly fine.