Leftist social media users began using the moniker “American Taliban” to refer to pro-lifers this week, when a Texas law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected went into effect.
Former evening news anchor turned progressive commentator Dan Rather took to Twitter Tuesday night to argue it’s “worth noting that many of the same people attacking the Biden administration for leaving women’s rights behind in Afghanistan are eager to control women’s bodies and choices in the United States.”
Leftist filmmaker Michael More was also among those likening Christians to terrorists. In August, he called Southern Baptists “religious nuts” not unlike Taliban terrorists.
After the final U.S. troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan this week, Moore tweeted it’s “time to fix ourselves and strengthen our own democracy and defend it against our own domestic Taliban.”
Another social media user, Christopher Bouzy, said President Joe Biden and the United Nations should “lead a humanitarian effort to airlift women out of Texas” because the “North American Taliban has seized control” of the Lone Star State. (Never mind the fact that the White House left Americans behind in Afghanistan, where the real Taliban has actually seized control.)
“Good morning and Happy Hump Day to everyone except the American Taliban in Texas, who have just made a woman’s right to choose and control her own body illegal,” added another person. “If you’re not furious, you’re not paying attention.”
Regina Marston, who is running for Congress in California, said the Republican governors of Florida and Texas, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, respectively, “are turning into the American Taliban.”
Another Twitter user whose account is used to parody conservative politics posted a Venn diagram suggesting conservative Christians and Taliban members hold a great deal of the same beliefs.
The Texas law — S.B. 8 — bans most abortions in the state, given fetal heartbeats are generally detectable around six weeks into pregnancy and before most women even know they are pregnant.
According to CBN News, the bill won’t be enforced by police. Instead, private citizens are now empowered to file lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone involved in facilitating abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.
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According to CBN News, the bill won’t be enforced by police. Instead, private citizens are now empowered to file lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone involved in facilitating abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.
While the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union condemned the measure as “devastating,” pro-life leaders were quick to praise it.
Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, lauded Abbott for signing the bill, writing, “Thinking of all the inestimably precious lives that will be spared today [and] their new lease on life.”
As for the “American Taliban” moniker, conservative author and podcast host Ben Shapiro wrote: “If you are calling pro-lifers ‘The American Taliban,’ you are beneath contempt.”
Many on the left have been drawing comparisons between pro-life Americans and Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan, where women are kept from society, banned from education, and subjected to honor killings, public beheadings, beatings, stoning, female genital mutilation, and underage forced marriages — among other things.
Last week, progressive MSNBC writer Dean Obeidallah warned that “the Taliban aren’t the only ones trying to impose their will on women’s bodies and choices.”
“Over the last few days,” he wrote, “the airwaves have been filled with Republicans voicing their deep concern over the rights of women in Afghanistan. And yet, I have to wonder where these voices were when extremists, based on a narrow reading of their religion’s beliefs, enacted a law that forces a woman who was raped to carry the fetus of the rapist to term?”
He went on to write that, if the Republican Party want to “show that it is sincerely concerned with the rights of the women in Afghanistan” it can “start first by championing the human rights for women in the U.S.” rather than “doing all it can to prevent gender equality while oppressing women based on its members’ extreme religious beliefs.”
MSNBC anchor Joy-Ann Reid agrees with the comparison, claiming conservative Christians in America are a “far religious right” sect “dreaming of a theocracy that would impose a particular brand of Christianity, drive women from the workforce and solely into childbirth, and control all politics.”
And this week, on MSNBC host Al Sharpton’s show, far-left attorney Jill Collen Jefferson compared pro-life Americans to suicide bombers.
Jefferson made the comparison just days after a suicide bomb attack in Kabul led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
“What it reminds me of, quite honestly, is a suicide bomber,” she said, referring to pro-life legislation and activism. “Someone who feels they have the right, the moral duty to mess up somebody else’s life for the greater good.”
Sharpton, for his part, did not push back against Jefferson’s comparison.
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