Paul Ryan Makes a Pretty Good Case for Keeping Abortion Legal

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan gave a speech Thursday night insisting that Republicans not cave on their opposition to abortion, but he ended up making the case for why abortion should remain legal. "We don't want a country where abortion is simply outlawed," Ryan told the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports pro-life female candidates. "We want a country where it isn't even considered."

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That's the big problem, isn't it? Just because abortion is illegal doesn't mean a woman won't consider it. In fact, sometimes even the pro-life Republican politician she's sleeping with will consider it. (Or demand it.) When abortions are illegal, women of lesser means will try to give themselves abortions with household objects, and women of more means will, as Joan Rivers put it in the 1960s, fly to Cuba or Puerto Rico and have "14 appendectomies." Rivers joked, "A friend of mine had nine appendectomies in Puerto Rico but she got lucky and married the doctor." Not every girl is so lucky.