{"id":1310507,"date":"2019-05-21T09:11:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T15:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=978746"},"modified":"2019-05-21T09:11:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T15:11:29","slug":"colorado-rep-scott-tipton-stirs-abortion-debate-with-mocking-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/colorado-rep-scott-tipton-stirs-abortion-debate-with-mocking-tweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Rep. Scott Tipton stirs abortion debate with mocking tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"
Scott Tipton is blaming a staffer for tweeting a mocking abortion meme from his official Twitter account.<\/strong>
File photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton\u2019s office is blaming a rogue staffer for tweeting a mocking abortion meme over the weekend deemed offensive by current and past state lawmakers who saw it and retweeted it before it was deleted a short time later.<\/p>\n

The meme, issued from Tipton\u2019s official congressional Twitter account<\/a>, showed female protestors with the caption \u201cWe want government controlled healthcare!\u201d Then below that the meme reads, \u201c*State government Bans abortions*\u201d followed by a picture of a surprised Pikachu \u2014 the popular Pok\u00e9mon character.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The meme is an apparent reference to the recent wave of state laws, starting in Alabama, that ban abortion to varying degrees. In the case of the Alabama law, which will likely be vigorously challenged by women\u2019s reproductive rights and pro-choice groups, the ban applies to victims of rape and incest and cases where the mother\u2019s health is at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tweet was mistakenly sent out by a staffer who helps manage the account,\u201d Tipton spokesman Matthew Atwood wrote in an email statement. \u201cIt was never viewed or vetted by Congressman Tipton prior to being posted and does not reflect Congressman Tipton\u2019s position or work on healthcare issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Backlash from lawmakers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Tipton, who represents the western two-thirds of Eagle County along with most of Colorado\u2019s Western Slope and part of the southern Front Range, has previously taken the position of supporting abortion<\/a> in cases of rape, incest or health of the mother. Tipton in the past has voted for a federal abortion ban<\/a> beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott Tipton has a consistent anti-choice record from 2011 right through 2019, and I didn\u2019t understand that tweet. It didn\u2019t make sense to me, and it was just so discombobulated,\u201d said former Democratic state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, who lost to Tipton by nearly 8 percentage points last November. \u201cIt definitely seemed to me to be an insult to pro-choice women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitsch Bush, a former Routt County commissioner and state lawmaker who resigned from the legislature to take on Tipton for Congress, said she\u2019s considering running against him again in 2020 and will have an announcement by the end of the month. She did not buy Tipton\u2019s rogue staffer explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy opinion, having been a legislator and wanting to be a United States congresswoman is the buck stops with the legislator and not with their staff. What the staff says represents you,\u201d Mitsch Bush said. \u201cNothing went out from my office that I hadn\u2019t vetted. You take responsibility and you\u2019re accountable and you\u2019re transparent and he\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atwood did not respond to further inquiries about disciplinary action facing the staffer. Nor did he care to expand on Tipton\u2019s stance on the various abortion bans being passed in other states in hopes of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.<\/p>\n

Out of line with Colorado voters<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Polling shows<\/a> the majority of Americans (50 percent) feel abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, with another 30 percent saying abortion should be legal under any circumstances, and just 18 percent saying abortion should never be legal for any reason.<\/p>\n

If Tipton is in any way backing Alabama\u2019s new law, that puts the Cortez businessman in a very small minority. In Colorado, voters have repeatedly rejected so-called \u201cPersonhood\u201d amendments seeking to define life as starting with \u201cthe beginning of the biological development\u201d of a human being \u2014 in other words, the fertilized egg as a person.<\/p>\n

Such extreme views have been overwhelmingly defeated at the ballot box in Colorado, where the issues of abortion and women\u2019s reproductive rights and a woman\u2019s ability to choose how to handle personal health care decisions became key factors in the state\u2019s U.S. Senate race in 2014.<\/p>\n

Incumbent Sen. Mark Udall took a great deal of heat for focusing intensely on protecting a woman\u2019s right to choose \u2014 earning the mocking nickname of Mark \u201cUterus\u201d. The Democrat narrowly lost to Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who reversed his previous support for the Personhood amendments<\/a> in order to defeat Udall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pro-life, but that\u2019s up to the states,\u201d Gardner said recently of the Alabama ban<\/a>. Gardner has backed both of President Donald Trump\u2019s conservative picks for the U.S. Supreme Court, which could ultimately decide to overturn Roe v. Wade \u2013 a decision that rejected state law attempting to ban abortions.<\/p>\n

Mitsch Bush added that the tweet\u2019s use of the phrase government-run health care was consistent with Tipton\u2019s frequent refrain during debates last year. She said the tweet does reflect Tipton\u2019s position and work on health care.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of does because he loves to talk about government-run health care,\u201d Mitsch Bush said. \u201cBut what we\u2019re talking about here is a basic right that was decided in 1973 based on the 9th and the 14th Amendments of the constitution. A woman under our constitution right now has a right to choose abortion if that\u2019s what she wishes. He\u2019s always been anti-choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic state Rep. Dylan Roberts \u2014 who represents the state house district comprised of Eagle and Routt counties that was vacated by Mitsch Bush so she could challenge Tipton \u2014 tweeted<\/a> his disapproval of Tipton\u2019s tweet on Sunday: \u201cThis was the really lame and offensive meme the Congressman has now deleted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/figure>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Tipton is blaming a staffer for tweeting a mocking abortion meme from his official Twitter account.File photo Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton\u2019s office is blaming a rogue staffer for tweeting a mocking abortion meme over the weekend deemed offensive by current and past state lawmakers who saw it and retweeted it before it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 18:24:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}