Bill Maher Lets Disgraced Writer Lie About Saying Women Should Be Hanged for Having Abortions

Bill Maher gave former Atlantic writer Kevin Williamson a national platform to lie about the remarks that got him fired from The Atlantic, which were repeated assertions that he supported women being hanged for having abortions.

Williamson’s brief career with the magazine ended in 2018 when his disgusting comments resurfaced, and he was fired. Now, spends his time pimping a book and lying about the comments that got him fired, which is what he was doing on Friday night’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maher eventually got around to asking Williamson about those remarks. You can watch the clip for the blow-by-blow and harshly judge Maher’s casual attitude for yourselves, but the short version is, he didn’t confront Williamson with his actual quotes, and he let Williamson lie about what he actually said.

First, he tried to sidetrack the conversation by telling Maher “That’s not exactly where I am on that, because I’m anti-capital punishment, but I have argued in the past that if we’re going to have capital punishment, it should be some forthrightly violent means of capital punishment,” then launched into a digression about the sanitization of executions.

Maher interrupted and asked “You want to kill people who have abortions, or doctors?”

“No, I don’t want to execute anybody,” Williamson said, adding “In the context of a different argument, well the thing is we don’t think you take abortion seriously if you’re not going to treat it like a homicide, and I think that if we’re going to prohibit abortion, that’s the category of things that should be prohibited under, because if abortion isn’t homicide, there’s no reason to prohibit it at all.”

But that’s not at all what Williamson said at the time. He wasn’t posed a hypothetical about killing women, he volunteered that as his preferred penalty, and he did not qualify his support for treating abortion as a homicide under the law.

In 2014, Williamson tweeted “I have hanging more in mind” when he was asked what penalty should apply to women who get an abortion. He then doubled down by saying, on his podcast, that “someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, ‘If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.’ And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging.”

He later added “My broader point here is, of course, that I am a — as you know I’m kind of squishy on capital punishment in general — but that I’m absolutely willing to see abortion treated like a regular homicide under the criminal code, sure.”

He didn’t say “If you’re going to prohibit abortion, it should be treated as a homicide,” he said “I support that,” and he didn’t say “if you’re going to execute people for abortions, you should use hanging, even though I’m anti-capital punishment and I’m only saying this as an abstract logical exercise,” he said — twice — “what I had in mind was hanging.”

Bill Maher later complained that he would take grief for “platforming” Williamson, and I would hate to disappoint him. See, there’s a difference between just having some douchebag with unpopular opinions on your show — or being said douchebag — and giving a platform for dangerous speech. People have been killed over anti-abortion rhetoric less extreme than what Williamson said.

But maybe it would be better to note that aside from Morning Joe and C-SPAN 2, no other cable news outlet has helped Williamson pimp his book, not even Fox News. I salute them, even Fox News.

As for Williamson, I think everyone can agree that no matter how you feel about abortion, we’re a couple hundred trimesters too late for him. I know that sounds mean, but I’m simply examining a hypothetical. I’m actually kind of squishy on retroactive abortion.

Watch the clip above, via HBO.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.