Sherri Shepherd has been open about her promiscuous past, telling the audience at “The View” she had more abortions than she would like to count back in 2008. But emotions were on the rise yesterday as the ladies discussed the controversial Texas law that requires women to have a sonogram before having an abortion, and Sherri got a little choked up this time.
While Elisabeth Hasselbeck expressed favor for the law, saying, “You would never go through any medical procedure like that…without looking at the scientific evidence, why you would ask for an X-ray for those things but not in this case?” Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called the law “totalitarian” and “heartbreaking.”
Sherri Shepherd seemed to be the only one speaking from the perspective of the women who would actually have to endure a sonogram before an abortion and she was noticeably upset at the requirement, saying it’s ridiculous to not want women to have abortions but also not want them to go to Planned Parenthood and get birth control and then give people the safety net of Welfare and food stamps to only come back and say the recipients keep having babies and don’t want to take care of them.
“We stop at the picket signs and we don’t help you past that!” she said. “I’m speaking as a girl who had a lot of abortions and I swear to God, if they had shown me a picture of the fetus I probably wouldn’t have but I would have put my child in a lot of situations that wouldn’t have been good because I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with having a child…it was a hard thing.”
Check out the clip from the segment here.
Do you think Sherri’s right about the catch 22 of women being discouraged from using preventive resources and then being criticized for getting pregnant? What about the idea of being guilted into having a child you can’t take care of with this law?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
