In a two-hour-long, admittedly somewhat rambling speech at CPAC Saturday afternoon, President Trump managed to garner the ire of liberals everywhere with one simple line about the dangerous journey many Central American women make to come to the United States illegally.
“Mothers who love their daughters give them massive amounts of birth control pills, because they know their daughters are going to be raped on the way up to our southern border,” Trump said. “Think of that. Think of how evil that is.”
Immediately, leftist Twitter lit up with outrage. Liberal journalists sharpened their pens for a bevy of op-eds as pundits heated up their mikes to take issue with Trump’s claim, all accusing the president of lying and spreading fake news about the illegal immigrant community.
ESPN’s resident Trump-basher Jemele Hill tweeted, “If you’re the type of person who believes this, you are dumb and awful.”
From author Molly Jong-Fast: “I wonder what movie Trump is getting this from.”
There’s just one problem: according to border agents who actually deal with this problem on the front lines, as well as countless illegal aliens' first-hand testimonies, Trump’s right.
One 2017 report – from NPR, no less – told the story of a 43-year-old woman who was advised to get a birth control injection to keep from getting pregnant if she was raped on the journey to America.
A 2018 article from the Guardian detailed how a Catholic priest working on the Mexican side of the border began going against his own faith’s anti-contraception dictates by helping immigrant women get birth control because of how commonly they were being raped in the quest to get to America.
“It is the lesser of two evils,” Father Prisciliano Perez told The Guardian. “Since she cannot prevent violation, she protects herself so that she won’t get pregnant.”
In 2014, the Daily Mail estimated that as many as six in 10 illegal alien women are sexually violated while coming to the U.S. unlawfully. A HuffPo piece put that number at closer to 80 percent, based on an independent Fusion study.
That same year, PBS ran a story on just how common rape is for women seeking to make the trip. From that story:
“What can I do in case I’m raped, and I don’t want to get pregnant?” Peña repeated in Spanish from behind the counter. “What can I use?”
Peña recommends an injection for 48 pesos, or less than $4, that protects women from pregnancy for a month. In Mexico, women can buy these products without a prescription.
Just last year, CBS Los Angeles quoted U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agentChris Cabrera as saying, “When you see a 12-year-old girl with a Plan B pill or her parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s a terrible way to live,” echoing Trump’s CPAC statement almost verbatim.
It’s been well documented that sexual violence, sometimes leading to unwanted pregnancies, is a common side effect of an open-borders policy that encourages Central American migrants, including young women and girls, to place their lives and safety in the hands of human smugglers and make the dangerous journey to the United States.
Then again, it’s also been well documented that the left would rather bash Trump than actually address the serious problems brought on by their own ill-conceived policies that promote human suffering and desperation.