Ben Shapiro and His Sister Are Secret Boomers
Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss a Shapiro conspiracy theory, and the right-wingers headed to CNN Plus. Then, abortion providers detail what’s happening to patients in Texas.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
Ben Shapiro’s 21-year-old sister, a Gen-Zer, decided she wanted to share the spotlight with her brother—and did it in the most random way.
As The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast explains it, young Shapiro tweeted a sexualized photo of Madonna and a “family” photo of Nancy Reagan side-by-side to try and make the point that former first lady is way classier than the ’80s pop princess.
“It’s so perfectly representative of this strain, which is the dominant strain now of modern conservatism,” new co-host Andy Levy says. “It’s just, it’s completely incurious, it’s ‘My feelings don’t care about your facts’” type of conservatism. But he makes another claim: that the Shapiro siblings are boomers in disguise, and he explains why.
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Later in the episode, Molly interviews two Planned Parenthood abortion providers, Dr. Iman Alsaden, who serves as medical director for Great Plains, and another in Texas, Dr. Bhavik Kumar.
They both give an on-the-ground perspective on what’s happening in the state post the Senate Bill 8 that banned abortions after six weeks and also how it’s impacting the states nearby. Point blank: There’s an “enormous” increase in the number of women leaving Texas to get abortions, from those who can’t afford a child to those who have been raped and impregnated by incest.
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“We’ve seen people from Austin fairly regularly, which is about I think six or seven hours, Houston, nine hours. We’re even seeing people from our clinic in Overland Park, Kansas. You’re getting into double digits in terms of the amount of driving,” says.
She’s seeing the bottleneck, with “a large number of patients that are not able to get care at all. And then the people that we are seeing are having to wait weeks and weeks and weeks for an appointment.”
Dr. Kumar says things in Texas are actually worse than he thought they’d be, calling it “inhumane.”
“[Patients are] trying to think about what their next option is and why they can’t access the care that they need and what are they gonna do next? And it’s very difficult to sit with them and say, there’s no logical, sensible reason for why you can’t get the care you need,” he says. “It violates my conscience as a physician.”
Molly asks what he’ll do if he’s no longer able to give abortions, and his answer is... heart-wrenching.
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