An ultrasound, he said, was “just a cool thing.”

O.K., that was only a little piece of his comment. And let’s acknowledge that presidential candidates are often tortured by reporters and commentators who jump on the least misstatement. The exact same thing happens to people who actually are president. This is why the ability to speak carefully is an attribute we look for when we’re trying to decide who we should elect as the most powerful and closely scrutinized human being in the world.

But about the ultrasound quote. Walker was complaining that, in his words, “the media is a gotcha.” He then bragged about his anti-abortion agenda:

“We defunded Planned Parenthood. We signed a law that requires an ultrasound, which, the thing about that, the media tried to make that sound like that was a crazy idea. Most people I talk to, whether they’re pro-life or not, I find people all the time who’ll get out their iPhone and show me a picture of their grandkids’ ultrasound and how excited they are, so that’s a lovely thing. I think about my sons are 19 and 20 and we still have their first ultrasound pictures. It’s just a cool thing out there.”

Now many people tend to babble when they’re stuck in front of a microphone. Perfectly normal. Except, once again, for the part about being a candidate for the most quote-sensitive job on the planet.

Let’s leap, temporarily, past the fact that Walker was conflating the vision of happy parents getting their first glimpse of their baby-to-be with what’s appropriate for a woman who has made the stupendously profound and private decision to terminate a pregnancy.

His larger point was apparently that the sight of a fetus in an ultrasound is so moving that a woman undergoing an abortion would almost certainly change her mind. This is wrong. There’s no evidence these ultrasound laws discourage women who have already decided they want an abortion. And it’s incredibly insulting because it presumes that they’re making this choice on a kind of whim. If they’d only thought things through.

