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Analysis
South Carolina state Rep. Melissa Oremus (R) is one of the Palmetto State’s biggest opponents of reproductive freedom.
That’s saying something in a state that came pretty close to making abortion a capital offense.
Oremus is best known for delivering speeches opposing abortion rights in which she talks about her “decision” to have a baby as a teenager. Oddly, she has no problem taking that choice from others.
Oremus’ web presence is pretty much all politics. She’s tweeted fewer than 200 times in the 11 years she’s been on Twitter. There’s also an intriguing seven-year gap between photos she posted on Facebook, from 2012 to 2019, when she successfully ran for the South Carolina state house.
In 2012, she posted on Facebook about supporting Nikki Haley. Also that year, Oremus used Twitter to encourage people to write her in for county treasurer.
Her Twitter history reveals that Oremus believes abortion is murder (it isn’t), Elon Musk is saving free speech on Twitter (he isn’t), and former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election (not even close).
Before the 2020 election, Oremus posted a video claiming that Republicans are cool with absentee voting, which they later falsely alleged was rife with fraud.
Nearly a year later, Oremus was listed as a signatory of conspiratorial Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers’ (R) letter calling for all 50 states’ “corrupted election[s]” to be “forensically audited.” (It’s noteworthy that both Rogers and Oremus won their races in 2020.)
Some may be amused to learn that Oremus shared a Facebook post encouraging South Carolinians to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Not because she supported Biden, of course. Oremus was concerned that Republicans intended to “make a point about crossover voting” by casting a ballot for “open socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whom she believed had the best chance of beating Trump.
You can find Oremus on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and a locked-down Instagram account.
Dirtiest Delete
Two years ago, Oremus posted a video about proposed legislation to allow people to openly carry guns in South Carolina.
When a fellow Republican blasted her for saying that it would make the state into the “Wild West,” Oremus deleted it “because people misunderstood.”
Alas, it was not archived anywhere I could find, but an echo of the video’s existence remains.
