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Yes.

In a now-deleted blog post from 2012, Wisconsin Supreme Court justice candidate Dan Kelly wrote that pro-choice groups support abortion rights to “preserve sexual libertinism.”

In the post, Kelly makes what he calls “epistemological matches,” or identifying people or groups whom he claims knowingly support what he deems harmful policies — such as abortion—to achieve their goals. 

“Here we will match the Democratic Party, a major women’s organization, and a single-purpose special interest group to a policy deadly to children. The subject, as you might guess, is abortion. The Democratic Party favors it, the National Organization of Women is adamantly supportive, and the National Abortion Rights Action League has the single-minded purpose of keeping it legal.”

He continues: “So we may safely charge them with knowingly favoring a policy that has its primary purpose harming children. Why? To preserve sexual libertinism.” 

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Internet Archive: Author Archives: Daniel Kelly

University of Sheffield: Epistemology

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Erin Gretzinger joined Wisconsin Watch as a reporting intern in May 2022. She is a journalism and French major at UW-Madison and will graduate in spring 2023. Erin previously worked for the Wisconsin State Journal as a reporting intern and served as the 2021-22 editor-in-chief at The Badger Herald. She is a recipient of the Jon Wolman Scholarship, the Sigrid Schultz Scholarship and the Joseph Sicherman Award Fund for her academic and reporting work.