A mobile clinic offering free abortions and vasectomies outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago was fully booked out even before the event got underway, organizers have announced. Conservatives have mocked the party for “neutering” its voters.
Planned Parenthood, the US’ largest provider of abortions, declared on Wednesday that it would be sending a mobile clinic to Chicago for the DNC on Monday and Tuesday. Parked outside the convention, the clinic will offer “free vasectomies and medication abortion,” the organization announced on X, adding that there would be a waiting list for vasectomies.
On Sunday, the day before the convention is set to begin, Planned Parenthood announced “all free vasectomy and medication abortions are filled.”
Conservative pundits and social media users ridiculed the idea of parking an “abortion bus” at the DNC.
“The average Democrat man is masked, vaxxed and rendered infertile via Planned Parenthood abortion food truck,” The Columbia Bugle, a right-wing news account, tweeted. “Democrats busy deleting their next generation from existence,” conservative writer Peachy Keenan wrote, adding: “I mean, okay.”
“I thought this was fake but it’s not,” Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene commented on Saturday. “Planned Parenthood is going to provide free vasectomies and abortions at the Democratic National Convention this upcoming week. It’s hard to even comprehend and it’s truly heartbreaking. Being a mother is the most precious gift, choose life.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s candidate for the presidency, has urged Congress to pass a law guaranteeing nationwide access to abortion.
Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that de-facto guaranteed the right to abortion under the Constitution’s right to privacy. However, Trump is less hardline on the issue than many Republican lawmakers, and supports the rights of individual states to set their own abortion laws.
Trump helped draft the Republican Party’s platform, which was published after its convention last month. For the first time in four decades, the platform does not call for a nationwide abortion ban, instead stating that the GOP will “oppose late-term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF [fertility treatments].”