While Mike Pence may be Donald Trump’s choice to serve as his running mate, it should not be forgotten that Pence is an incredibly extreme and far right politician who has devoted much of his life trying to impose his own religious beliefs on others–usually women–through legislation.

As Jeff Sharlet–an expert on Christian fundamentalism pointed out yesterday on the MSNBC show “AM Joy,” Pence is probably the most-anti woman candidate this country has ever seen. Sharlet said Pence is a sort of “broker” between “evangelicalism and Republicanism in Washington.” Sharlet then added:

“To understand Mike Pence and to understand that kind of religious conservative politics, you have to not think of social conservatism and fiscal conservatism as separate, but like Mike Pence says, ‘Our goal, our mission, is to marry fiscal and moral values.’ He sees them as one in the same, so when you go back in his record and you look at his speeches about abortion, which are really something. He is probably the most anti-abortion presidential or VP candidate we’ve had. You see him also bringing in financial. He sees it if we don’t stop abortion, our economy will collapse. So he’s the guy who sort of stands in the middle between those two factions of the Republican Party.”

Host Joy Reid agreed with Sharlet and pointed out these facts:

“On abortion, he signed a law as Indiana governor banning abortions because of genetic anomalies, abortions that were unfortunate anomalies, and he also signed a law mandating, and this is weird, women who have a miscarriage or an abortion had to have a burial for the fetus and must cremate after a miscarriage or abortion. On LGBT rights, he signed a law allowing religious beliefs as a defense against discrimination in lawsuits, and then after a backlash, he’s revised the law to exclude LGBT discrimination which got him in trouble with conservatives in Indiana. On prison, he reinstated a ten-year mandatory minimum drug sentencing.”

So while Donald Trump may be a recent convert to right-wing extremism, Mike Pence, who would be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, is a true believer and just as dangerous as Trump himself.

Here’s the MSNBC segment:

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org