Attempting to illustrate what he sees as a stark difference between the Biden-led Democratic Party and the MAGA-led GOP, California Congressman Ted Lieu shared a New York Times story about a Nebraska teen who received a jail sentence for violating the state’s abortion laws — and for burning and burying the fetus she aborted. Rep. Lieu was not treated kindly in the comments.
Lieu wrote: “Democrats put #PeopleOverPolitics and passed an infrastructure law to rebuild roads, bridges and highways. What are Republicans focused on? Locking women up for having an abortion.”
Democrats put #PeopleOverPolitics and passed an infrastructure law to rebuild roads, bridges and highways.
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 21, 2023
What are Republicans focused on? Locking women up for having an abortion. https://t.co/H40YEemmsI
Lieu sought to highlight the disparate legislative priorities of the two parties by bringing attention to the case of the 19-year-old Celeste Burgess who, along with her mother Jessica Burgess, was arrested last year for violating Nebraska’s abortion law when she was 17 years old and at the beginning of her third trimester.
The charges included “illegally concealing human remains” after the abortion, which was done with pills. The younger Burgess received a 90 day sentence. Her mother faces sentencing in September.
Lieu tried to use the abortion penalty meted out to Burgess in Nebraska — where a 12-week ban replaced a 20-week ban after the Supreme Court invalidated Roe v. Wade last year — as an example of misplaced MAGA priorities. HIjacking the narrative, the Congressman wholly ignored the human tragedy of the story.
Then in a startlingly obtuse political move, Lieu compared the awful Burgess case to the “rebuilding” of roads and bridges made possible by the Democrats’ infrastructure law.
Reactions to Lieu’s post — and his dubious attempt to reduce the tragic and brutal Burgess case to merely “locking women up for having an abortion” — were hotly divided, as the comments below show. Where one commenter sees a distraught Celeste Burgess and takes pity on her, another sees a murderer who “absolutely belongs in prison for a lot longer than she’s going for.”
That “poor child” absolutely belongs in prison for a lot longer than she’s going for. She was 29 weeks pregnant, baby was fully formed, and she killed the baby then set the babies body on fire then buried the dead body.
— Travis Wood (@RealTravisWood) July 21, 2023
The comments mostly excoriate Rep. Lieu , with some of his followers even expressing the hope that he didn’t actually read the article before sharing — at least that way a less than full understanding of the case might be blamed for his not having produced a more reasoned, compassionate and truthful response.
“Bruh did you read the story?” asked one astonished commenter.
[NOTE: The Burgess abortion took place before the more stringent law went into effect and before the SCOTUS decision on Roe — and that action taken by the Burgess women was against the existing law.]
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