He writes:<\/p>\n
Your claim that Trump and Hillary will do the same thing on abortion, namely maintain the status quo, is the biggest weakness in your nevertrumpness and the one place where a lot of reasonable pro-life people disagree with you.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re correct that, by all accounts, Trump doesn\u2019t care about abortion and will do nothing about it.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s simply not the case with Hillary. She will expand the abortion license, do all she can to roll back the life-saving pro-life laws that have been put in place over the last few years, give Planned Parenthood everything they want, repeal the Hyde Amendment (the abortion lobby\u2019s stated next goal), and whatever other abortion supporting action she can push.<\/p>\n
The one thing she will most assuredly NOT do is maintain the status quo. And while the status quo on abortion is horrible, it\u2019s still not as bad as it could be. Maintaining it instead of letting it get much worse is an actual positive good that many people think outweighs many of Mr. Trump\u2019s negatives.<\/p>\n
I understand you don\u2019t share that analysis, but under-selling the threat Hillary poses on the abortion front doesn\u2019t help your case with those who disagree with you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is true that Hillary has made a great deal of noise about overturning the Hyde Amendment and that this distinguishes her from Trump, and not for the better.<\/p>\n
The question is (and this is a prudential judgment), how likely is that to happen with a GOP-dominated Congress, and how serious is she about frittering away political capital just to please the fanatical 20% of her base that zealously want abortion on demand without apology, funded by the state, everywhere, always and for all time. \u00a0Recall<\/a>:<\/p>\n
20% of Americans want abortion on demand without apology. 20% want it outlawed. 60% of Americans don\u2019t like abortion but also have no intention at all of telling some woman in a crisis pregnancy what she has to do. They don\u2019t want to think about it and they wish it would all go away.<\/p>\n
Our two major candidates have to navigate that to win and two basic strategies dominate (and have dominated for 30 years). Trump knows his audience. He speaks of abortion as little as possible and only to signal his approval of abortion and support for Planned Parenthood\u00a0to the mainstream while lying to prolife people that he totally hears them and is on their side. His deluded \u201cprolife\u201d supporters then do the heavy lifting of rationalizing their support for him when he has, in fact, made clear he will not change a thing in the law and that he likes Planned Parenthood just fine. He makes crazy statements about punishing post-abortive women <\/a>to please the fanatics out at the end of the bell curve and then, when normal people (including most prolifers) gasp in horror, he rescinds them quickly to tack to the center<\/a>. He has to do this to fool a crowd of suckers that wants him to lie to them\u2013a crowd which\u00a0has demonstrated time and again that the most transparent cynic can get their passionate support if he just wears a Precious Feet pin (see, \u201cRomney, Mitt\u201d, \u201cCheney, Dick\u201d).<\/p>\n
Clinton, in turn, has to please her base so she signals her\u00a0passionate support for theother<\/em> 20% (early in the campaign). Then,\u00a0later, she will likewise tack to the center and tell the mainstream (who don\u2019t like abortion but don\u2019t want to ban it) that she will keep it \u201csafe, legal, and rare\u201d as the campaign goes on. (Obama did the same stuff. Remember the Freedom of Choice Act he was going to sign on Day One of his Presidency? It vanished into thin air the moment he was elected.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hillary has been obeying classic Dem strategy so far: go to the Left and shore up the base out at the end of bell curve that are abortion zealots. \u00a0Now she will have to please the 60% of Americans who don\u2019t like abortion and who also don\u2019t want to get rid of it. \u00a0The classic Clintonian triangulation\u00a0is \u201csafe, legal, and rare\u201d: a perfect reflection of the illusion that the bulk of Americans want to cocoon themselves in and one Clinton has done much to foster. \u00a0It\u2019s her language after all.<\/p>\n
So the question is, does she want to make a fight with an intensely obstructionist Congress over abortion\u2013a hugely volatile issue with very little political payoff\u2013something she really wants to piddle away her already miniscule political goodwill. \u00a0She will enter office as one of the most deeply disliked (even by her own party) new Presidents in American history. \u00a0Assuming she beats Congress (a big assumption) and forces the repeal of Hyde, a victory in which she forces 80% of the country to pay for something they feel very queasy about\u2013and that 80% includes a 20% that regards abortion as the gravest moral issue of our time and is willing to fight and in some cases offer civil and uncivil disobedience in reply\u2026 well, what kind of victory will that be for her? \u00a0It will ensure bitter and even crazy hatred for her at worst, deep generalized resentment at best, from about 80% of the public. \u00a0Her party will suffer in the midterms as a result and the honeymoon, what little there was, will be dead as a doornail and the rest of her administration hampered by bad will. \u00a0And Trump will still be there, awaiting 2020 and ginning up half the country about the whole thing.<\/p>\n
So I think she will drop the Hyde thing like Obama dropped FOCA. \u00a0The game\u2019s not worth the candle. \u00a0That\u2019s why she picked Kaine, just as Trump picked Pence. \u00a0Both are signalling to the center, \u201cI don\u2019t care about this crap. \u00a0I\u2019m going to maintain the status quo and not rock\u00a0any boats. \u00a0I have other fish to fry.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just an educated guess of course. \u00a0But it does have years of actual experience of Clinton behind it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, reader points out the complete blind spot in the prolife movement\u2019s analysis:<\/p>\n
In the world of the status quo, Hillary has more potential to reduce abortion than Trump does. Women who get abortions do it mostly because they don\u2019t see any other choice. Hillary has a history of supporting things like health insurance for poor children, which relieves some of the financial burden off of poor mothers. If she does manage to reduce higher-education costs or raise the minimum wage, that will also take pressure off of poor mothers. Women under less financial pressure are less likely to get abortions.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more than one way to address an issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The prolife moment has had one strategy and one only for abortion since forever: Ignore demand and try to annihilate supply, especially through the fantasy of overturning Roe<\/em>.<\/p>\n
But as I have already pointed out (and this election abundantly illustrates) neither party cares about that fantasy and both work together to subvert it. \u00a0So I repeat. We are not going to overturn Roe. \u00a0Ever. \u00a080% of Americans like Roe just fine and both political parties profit from it. \u00a0So they are not going to change it.<\/p>\n
Therefore the question is, \u201cDo you want to save lives or do you want to waste time on a quixotic quest?\u201d \u00a0I prefer saving lives for a very simple reason taught to me incessantly by conservatives on every other issue of human life from war to gun violence: utopia does not exist. \u00a0The inevitable result of demanding utopia is failure. \u00a0The result of prudence, on the other hand, is a measure of real success.<\/p>\n
Given that abortion is now at it lowest rate since 1973\u2013now, under the Great Satan Obama\u2013prudence suggests that the prolife movement swallow its pride and consider the possibility of looking, not only at reduction of supply, but at reduction of demand by considering the fact that poverty is the world\u2019s biggest abortifacient and that social programs which address the poor\u2013sometime Republicans hate and fight\u2013are in fact a vital part of reducing abortion.<\/p>\n
That would require a metanoia that the Party of Personal Responsibility hates, but which the power of the Holy Spirit can help Christians embrace.<\/p>\n
In the end, what I am talking about, yet again, is comparing conservative politics, not with liberal politics, but with the teaching of the Church. \u00a0I\u2019m talking about abandoning the utterly failed strategy of pitting the unborn against the rest of the Church\u2019s teaching things like a living wage, respect for the poor, respect for the refugee, a massive arms budget and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He writes: Your claim that Trump and Hillary will do the same thing on abortion, namely maintain the status quo, is the biggest weakness in your nevertrumpness and the one place where a lot of reasonable pro-life people disagree with you. You\u2019re correct that, by all accounts, Trump doesn\u2019t care about abortion and will do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-96527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mailbag"],"yoast_head":"\n
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