Florida House Speaker José Oliva (R) apologized Friday for referring to pregnant women as “host bodies” during an interview about abortion, The Miami Herald reported on Friday.
The state lawmaker said the use of the phrase was an “an attempt to use terminology found in medical ethics writings with the purpose of keeping the discussion dispassionate. The reaction undoubtedly shows it had the exact opposite effect.”
“I apologize for having caused offense, my aim was the contrary,” Oliva said in his apology. “This is and will continue to be our societies [sic] greatest challenge. I strongly believe both mother and child have rights and the extent and balance of those rights remain in question. I regret my wording has distracted from the issue. My apologies to all.”
The apology comes after Oliva used the phrase multiple times during an interview about abortion with CBS4’s Jim DeFede, which was released Thursday night.
“It’s a complex issue, because one has to think well, there’s a host body, and that host body has to have a certain amount of rights, because at the end of the day, it is that body that carries this entire other body to term. But there’s an additional life there,” Oliva said in the interview.
The lawmaker said that life begins at conception.
“The only definition of science of life is something that grows: From the moment that conception occurs there begins to be growth. And so scientifically that’s what it is,” he said. “But that’s not the question. The question is: What is the value of that life? And is it subordinate to the value of its host body?”
Oliva’s comments were quickly criticized after the interview was released, the Herald noted.
Florida Democratic Party chair Terrie Rizzo called his comments “hurtful, dehumanizing, and misogynistic.”
“You’d expect to hear this offensive language in the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ — not from the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives,” Rizzo said.