Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Hypocrite)
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Hypocrite)
A text message sent in January to U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy by a woman with whom he had an extra-marital relationship took him to task for an anti-abortion statement posted on Facebook from his office's public account. "And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare. A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."

Murphy represents Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District. He campaigns as a defender of "family values" and he's beloved by the anti-choice/anti-gay/anti-most-families Family Research Council and LifePAC, an anti-choice org working to ban abortion with no exception for incest or rape. Or mistresses. But being exposed as a hypocrite on abortion rights—or on life, in the language of the anti-choice crowd—isn't going to be a problem with "family values" voters. Look at the man they backed for president. There's also David "The Shitter" Vitter, who got reelected to the Senate from Louisiana after being exposed as the kind of "family values" politician who patronizes sex workers. And in a case that's eerily similar, GOP voters in Tennessee returned an anti-choice, "pro-family" asswipe to Congress—Rep. Scott DesJarlais—after learning that DesJarlais had successfully pushed his mistress and his ex-wife to get abortions. "Two abortions. Maybe three, if you count the one he pressured a girlfriend—who happened to be his patient—to get," wrote Politico at the time.

Murphy and DesJarlais support abortion rights but only for women they've ejaculated inside, a price most American women are unwilling to pay. Just another couple of "screw as I say, not as I screw/choice for me, not for thee" Republicans who are highly likely to be returned to office by "pro-family" voters whose "sincerely held religious beliefs" are inviolable when it comes to baking cakes but negotiable when it comes to killing babies.

In other news: Republicans in the House of Representatives voted today—the same day the news about Murphy's mistress broke—to ban all abortions after 20 weeks. Jezebel:

The bill criminalizes second trimester abortions by imposing steep fines or a five-year-maximum prison term for providers who terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks, leaving exceptions for instances of rape or threat to the life of the mother. While 99 percent of abortions do take place in the first 21 weeks, a significant number of women who seek later abortions do so because they learned about their pregnancies late, lack resources or access to healthcare, or learn of a genetic or fetal abnormality detected in the second trimester. In some cases, pregnancies can become complicated and cause health problems for the mother. House Republicans, however, believe that by passing this bill they will be saving lives.

The vote was 237 to 189. Murphy and DesJarlais cosponsored the bill and both men voted to approve it. Because abortion is wrong... unless they've ejaculated inside you.