Democrats want to ‘prevent you from reproducing,’ Tucker Carlson tells Fort Worth audience

Democrats have one issue in the upcoming general election — abortion — and it’s a hate-based strategy meant to discourage their opponents from having babies, according to former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson.

“Anyone who is trying to prevent you from reproducing hates you — super simple,” he said at a live event that almost half-filled Fort Worth’s Dickies Arena on Tuesday night. “And if they’ve constructed an entire platform where your only right is not to have children, they hate you. That’s the only right you possess.”

“Evil!” shouted one woman from her seat.

Carlson took the stage after comedian and Dallas native Alex Stein warmed up the crowd with jokes about Haitian migrants keeping Chinese buffets in business due to cats being on the menu and how he gets excited seeing that the pilot of a plane he’s about to board is Black “because that means you get to smoke weed on this flight.”

“They don’t like you at all. ... They hate you, which is why they’re encouraging you to not have children at every turn,” Carlson said. “It’s just really simple, if you love someone, you want more of them, and if you hate them, you want fewer, right?”

He then compared having children to the multiple cheesesteaks he said he ate with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones the night before. The name drop elicited a hearty round of cheers from the audience.

“If I like something, I want more of it,” he said over their applause.

A bankruptcy judge in Houston said on Tuesday that Jones’ radio show Infowars would be auctioned to pay the more than $1 billion in damages he owes to families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. Jones called the shooting a “hoax” by “crisis actors” with the goal of enacting stricter gun regulation.

Carlson was fired by Fox News in April 2023 after years of racist statements and sexist behavior finally caught up to him, according to Vanity Fair.

The reasons for protecting access to abortion services are numerous and complex, according to reproductive health services provider Planned Parenthood. A list of reasons why people seek abortion services on its website includes a person’s readiness to be a parent or preference to focus on professional or academic goals first, among others.

“Deciding to have an abortion doesn’t mean you don’t want or love children,” the website states.

For abortion supporters, access to the procedure is about enabling people to create their own futures, not stopping families from having them, according to Kamyon Conner, executive director of the abortion rights advocate group Texas Equal Access Fund.

“[W]hen individuals have control over their reproductive health, they are able to prioritize their futures and build the lives and families they desire. Access to abortion allows people to make decisions that are best for themselves and their loved ones,” she said in an emailed statement.

Abortion is not the only issue Democrats are running on in 2024. The Democratic Party’s official platform includes nine chapters, each featuring generalized policy issues. The first of these is the economy. It is followed by issues such as lowering taxes for working families, lowering costs of health care, housing, gas and other goods and services, and addressing climate change, among other issues.

Abortion does not appear until chapter six, and is included among more than a dozen freedoms the party aims to protect and strengthen.

“This election will decide whether the next generation of Americans has more rights and freedoms than past generations, or fewer,” the platform text reads. “Trump and Republicans are already ripping away Americans’ hard-won freedoms. Reproductive freedom, freedom from hate, freedom from fear, the freedom to control our own destinies and more are all on the line in this election.”

The platform also notes how anti-abortion laws have led to restrictions on in vitro fertilization services, such as in Alabama earlier this year.

“IVF is enormously popular, enjoying the support of the vast majority of Americans,” the platform says. “Yet Trump’s overturning Roe opened the door to laws that rip away access to this vital care — as we saw when Alabama families had treatments halted earlier this year.”

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans voted down a Democratic bill that would have protected access to IVF treatment nationwide.