Helen Lewis writes:

The most emotional moment of last night’s Democratic National Convention was supposed to be Joe Biden’s farewell, after his party’s power brokers made clear he could not run again. And true, his address showed a graciousness in defeat that Donald Trump could never hope to understand. But the most moving speech of the evening was only a few minutes long, and it was given by a young woman from Kentucky.

Her name was Hadley Duvall, and she spoke in a section devoted to the effects of abortion bans on regular people. She introduced herself as an “all-American girl,” a cheerleading captain, a homecoming queen—and a “survivor.” A decade ago, Duvall became pregnant at 12 after being raped by her stepfather, and she wanted to draw attention to Donald Trump’s description of abortion bans as a “beautiful thing.”

Duvall asked: “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”

The awfulness of what had happened to this young woman, and the dignity with which she recounted it, silenced the audience. Some delegates had tears in their eyes. Here in prime time, the Democrats were confronting their opponents with their support for laws that force 12-year-old girls to bear their rapists’ babies. Never mind weird; that’s obscene. [Continue reading…]