…[what a woman] wants trumps the non-existent desires of a mindless pre-person that is so small it can be removed in about two minutes during an outpatient procedure. Your cavities fight harder to stay in place.
Trump created a mini scandal this week on the topic of abortion. He made the mistake of taking pro life advocates on their word that they considered abortion murder, and in an interview stated that if abortion is made illegal women who illegally abort their children should face some form of punishment. As CNN explains, this unified both the pro and anti abortion groups against Trump:
By suggesting that women who get an abortion should face punishment, Trump managed to unite advocates on both sides of the issue. Abortion opponents have pushed for punishment for doctors who perform abortions, but not women who receive them. That Trump struggled with this issue — a core holding of these advocates — underscored for some that he is new to the conservative fight…
After the interview Trump quickly backtracked his comment, explaining that women who abort their children are victims:
If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed – like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.
Cruz issued a statement blasting Trump for not understanding the pro life position. He explained that women who abort their children should not be punished for doing so, but instead should be celebrated for their ability to give birth:
Once again Donald Trump has demonstrated that he hasn’t seriously thought through the issues, and he’ll say anything just to get attention. On the important issue of the sanctity of life, what’s far too often neglected is that being pro-life is not simply about the unborn child; it’s also about the mother — and creating a culture that respects her and embraces life. Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.
Both Trump’s second statement and Cruz’s statement above are in line with with the pro life movement, as CNSNews.com explains in Pro-Life Leaders Say Abortionists Should Be Punished, Not Their Women Victims.
Pro-life leaders were vociferous in their rejection of Donald Trump’s statement to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that pro-lifers believe women should be punished for having an abortion, pointing out that their longstanding position is that women are also victims of abortionists as well as their unborn babies.
In this case even Matt Walsh finds himself in agreement with Trump’s second statement:
In other recent tweets Walsh compares the head of Planned Parenthood to Pol Pot, and refers to abortion as murder.
Trump’s blunder was believing that pro life activists mean these kinds of statements. If they really believed abortion was murder, a woman who put a hit out on her unborn child would merit punishment along with the rest of the murder-for-hire conspiracy. After all, she is entrusted by God to protect this child, and legally she is the only one who can decide to kill it. What Trump didn’t understand until after the interview is these kinds of cartoonish demonstrations are not to be taken seriously. This is what conservatives do, especially Christian conservatives.
It is worth noting here that the source of outrage against Trump’s original statement isn’t that he proposed something that was right morally but ill-advised politically. The pile on from the pro life leaders was a histrionic objection to Trump implying that a woman who kills her unborn child bears some culpability for the child’s death. The official pro life position states that women who have abortions are merely victims. While it is true that women are more easily deceived, this doesn’t absolve women of responsibility for their sins. Moreover, in this case it is the pro life leaders themselves who are assisting in the deception by telling women in advance that they are merely victims if they have an abortion. This is cruel to women, and the cruelty comes from cowardice of speaking the truth about women and sin.
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