Twitter is having a field day over the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s report that Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Penn., encouraged his mistress to get an abortion, despite publicly espousing a pro-life stance.
According to the Post-Gazette, divorce records for the woman, forensic psychologist Shannon Edwards, show that the Congressman apparently texted her in January to get an abortion amid a pregnancy scare.
“And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options,” Edwards texted Murphy on Jan. 25, per the report. Murphy admitted to the affair in September, according to CNN.
A reply from Murphy’s phone read, “I get what you say about my March for life messages. I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
This report comes on the day that the House passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act on Tuesday. Murphy is a co-sponsor of the bill that imposes a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Twitter users were quick to chime in about the apparent hypocrisy, including Questlove, who wrote, “When you are pro life … but need your mistress to ‘handle that tho.’”
“Tim Murphy believes abortion should be illegal except in rare cases of rape, incest or his mistress getting knocked up,” another person wrote.
Check out an array of tweets below.
when you are pro life…..but need your mistress to "handle that tho" https://t.co/HZFMukfztl
— ?st (@questlove) October 3, 2017
🔥The House just passed legislation to ban abortions after 20 weeks. The co-sponsor was no other than Tim (get an abortion) Murphy.😐
— Christopher Bouzy (spoutible.com/cbouzy) (@cbouzy) October 3, 2017
Tim Murphy believes abortion should be illegal except in rare cases of rape, incest or his mistress getting knocked up.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) October 3, 2017
Rep. Tim Murphy, good to see that you were following your Christian values, just like Gingrich, Vitter, Sanford, etc.#Hypocrite #GOP
— @StateoftheRepublic (@staterepublics) October 3, 2017
https://twitter.com/AidenWolfe/status/915335645710647296
Well this is disturbing but not surprising…. Rep. Tim Murphy, popular with the pro-life movement, allegedly urged an abortion in an affair that he had. Just another hypocrite in congress!
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) October 3, 2017
On a scale of one to Rep. Tim Murphy, how much of a hypocrite are you?
— Ally (@allymarie93) October 3, 2017