Asshole of the Month: Erin Hawley
According to a Gallup poll conducted in May 2023, 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal to some degree, with 34% favoring no restrictions at all and 51% in favor of abortion with some restrictions. Only 13% believe that abortion should be illegal under any circumstances, mainly Catholics and evangelical Christians. Yet this shrill minority is hell-bent on making their antiquated, faith-based obsession the law of the land. And it’s not only the patriarchy. There has always been a strong contingent of conservative women leading the fight to abolish abortion, from Phyllis Schlafly to Penny Nance, Alveda King and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
A new heroine of the back-to-the-Middle-Ages movement is lawyer Erin Hawley, wife of Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. You remember Josh, the ringleader of attempts to overturn the electoral college vote count in 2020 and install his hero, Trump? The man who cheered on insurrectionists and then fled when they breached the Capitol on January 6th? Well, meet the missus.
Erin grew up on a cattle ranch near Folsom, New Mexico, population 50, but eventually migrated to the East Coast and graduated from Yale Law School. Since then, she’s become a Bible-thumping legal eagle with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian advocacy group linked to religious zealots like current House Speaker Mike Johnson, former VP Mike Pence, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Jeff Sessions and of course hubby Hawley too.
