Betsy DeVos Sparks Outrage After Comparing Being ‘Pro-Choice’ to Supporting Slavery

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has sparked outrage after comparing people who are pro-choice to the choice states made to own slaves.

DeVos was giving a talk at a Colorado Christian University event in Washington, D.C., when she made the remarks. She was discussing President Donald Trump’s record on 🏥Abortion the same week he is set to become the first president to ever attend the anti-🏥Abortion March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.

Speaking about Trump’s record, DeVos compared him to President Abraham Lincoln.

“He, too, contended with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day,” she said, according to prepared remarks that the education department shared with POLITICO. “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it.”

DeVos added that Lincoln told the “pro-choicers” of his day that Americans viewed slavery as a moral evil.

“Lincoln was right about the slavery ‘choice’ then, and he would be right about the life ‘choice’ today,” she said. “Because as it’s been said: Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought.”

Reports about Devos’s remarks immediately sparked outrage. Rolling Stone writer Jamil Smith tweeted, “Only slavery was slavery,” and said DeVos’s remarks were “utterly deranged” and “she should resign.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) also tweeted at DeVos:

While the event was closed to the press, a Colorado Times Recorder reporter attended and recorded DeVos’s remarks. That story initially got the word out, and POLITICO confirmed it by obtaining the prepared remarks.

https://twitter.com/LabSplice/status/1220730176029458432

DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education have not yet responded to the criticism of her remarks.