Dana Milbank made quite a whopper on NPR’s Dianne Rehm show earlier today. In a discussion of the politics of judicial nominations and abortion, Milbank made the point that Congress is likely to address many abortion-related issues in coming months beyond whether judges would support or overturn Roe v. Wade. Fair enough. But among the proposals Milbank said would be up for debate was “the death penalty for abortionists.” Yes, you read that correctly. Milbank said there were serious legislative proposals to execute abortion providers. This is both fanciful and absurd — fanciful because there is no such proposal under serious consideration, and absurd because it would be legally impossible to impose the death penalty for something that cannot be severely limited, let alone prohibited.
Milbank is hardly an uninformed commentator. He’s covered politics for the Washington Post for some time, so he must know better than to suggest the Republican majority might seek to execute abortionists. Some conservative commentators have criticized Milbank for liberal “opinion journalism.” Today he certainly earned that reputation.
Note: I am aware that some of the more extreme abortion opponents would support the death penalty for abortion, but that was not what Milbank said. Rather, he claimed this was among the specific abortion-related issues that Congress would soon debate. Note also that I missed the very end of the program, so if he later clarified the statement, I will be happy to make a note of it.
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