Before and after her prime-time address at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson was publicly voicing her support for head-of-household voting.
This voting system would allow only the head of a household to cast a ballot. In Johnson’s opinion, that means that “in a Godly household, the husband would get the final say.”
Johnson launched into the national spotlight in 2009 when she quit her job as a clinic director at Planned Parenthood and joined the anti-abortion movement. She bills herself as embodying a “new kind of feminism” on her website.
“I would support bringing back household voting,” she tweeted in May. “How anti-feminist of me.”
When asked how this would play out if members of a household held different political beliefs, she replied, “Then they would have to decide on one vote” and that it should be the husband’s.
Johnson claimed on Tuesday that she would “never” prevent women from voting. Yet when commenters noted that men would have the final say under her proposed system, she responded: “Yes. So shocking! A husband and wife who are in agreement and a wife who honors her husband as the head of the home.”
As The 19th* first reported, Johnson’s comments come a day before the 100th anniversary of the day that the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, was adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Notably, one of the arguments against women’s suffrage was that men could vote on behalf of their households, The 19th* wrote.
Johnson’s past comments about racial profiling also resurfaced on Tuesday ahead of her RNC slot. In a video obtained by Vice, Johnson said it would be “smart” for police to “be more careful around my brown son than my white son” because of “statistics.”
During her RNC address, she accused Planned Parenthood of racism (citing incorrect statistics to do so) and used graphic language to stigmatize abortion, despite it being a safe and common procedure.