I need to talk to my fellow Catholics right before they go vote.
It’s just going to take about twenty minutes if that. Polls are open all day. Give me a little time.
I want you to watch a video for me, please.
I know that John Oliver’s vulgarity is not to everybody’s tastes and I absolutely don’t agree with all of his political views. I am sure he’d have nothing but contempt for many of the things I do believe. But, this is a very good report that he’s done here on a crucial issue, that of family separation at the Southern border. Watch the video. Listen to little Jenri from Hondouras cry, if you can stand to.
I remember long, long ago in 2016, I was told by my conservative friends (yes, I had conservative friends back in 2016) that the reason they as good Christians were voting for a lecherous, narcissistic, racist cad like Trump was merely because he would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices to help end abortion. That was all. They didn’t like him, they didn’t think he was actually pro-life, they didn’t think he stood a chance anyway, but he was a tolerable evil because of the Supreme Court justices.
We’ve got those now.
We’ve got President Trump, a lecherous and narcissistic racist cad who shows no signs of being pro-life, and we’ve got not one but two brand new conservative Supreme Court justices.
I mean, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch both said that Roe Versus Wade is established law, but okay, we’ve got our stacked Supreme Court just the way the pro-life movement envisioned. Which, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, the Supreme Court was stacked with conservative justices back in 1973 when Roe Versus Wade was decided. And it was stacked with conservatives again in 1992 when Planned Parenthood Versus Casey was decided. Both times, Republicans ruled that access abortion ought not to be banned by law. But all right, this is the prize you wanted, and you got it. You got your Supreme Court justices. Good luck with those.
You’ve got a congress stacked with Republicans as well, a bonus prize. And they have done very little in the past two years to end abortion. They almost passed a doozy of a law which probably would have greatly increased abortions and other infant deaths and crippled pro-life obstetricians’ ability to help, as I wrote about here. But it didn’t pass. They could have tackled the abortion issue itself in many ways as their first priority back in January 2017, but they didn’t. They were too busy passing tax cuts for the very richest and trying to take insurance away from just about everyone with no particularly good plan to give other options. That was their priority. There’s always a chance they’ll get around to boldly saving unborn babies this January if they’re still in office, but I just don’t think you can trust them on it. They haven’t earned our trust.
And Trump is going to stay president for at least two more years. He is. Hillary is not coming back to haunt you; that’s no excuse now. Even if somehow both the House and the Senate flipped, which is unlikely, do you have any idea how hard it is to impeach a president and then successfully throw him out of office? Congress couldn’t even do it to Slick Willie back in the 90s. And if they somehow did? You’d end up with President Pence who is also, on paper, pro-life. More pro-life than Trump I’d bet. And as for impeaching Supreme Court justices– it’s theoretically possible, but it’s not going to happen either.
You’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, as far as the abortion issue. Neither party is going to do anything pro-life and you’ve already got your justices.
But, by doing everything you can to throw a monkey wrench in whatever Trump’s plans are for the second half of his term, you just might save some other children.
You just might help some children get out of those prisons– and some are still there, even though the news cycle has forgotten them. You just might help some children not end up in jail and traumatized for life, like poor little Jenri. God have mercy on him. We did that to him. We– the United States. We are a representative government. We elect people to do things for us. That’s what the president, congress and the Supreme Court are supposed to be. They are our hands and voices for governing this country and for interacting with other nations. And what did they do? Yeah, they appointed some Supreme Court justices. But other than that? They bickered, they argued, they made themselves look foolish, they barely touched the abortion issue except to almost make things worse, they passed a tax cut for rich people. And now Jenri has post-traumatic stress disorder. Lots of children have post-traumatic stress disorder. They– and by they I mean we, the people, through our elected government– caused horrific trauma for children and their parents and it did not, in any way, make us safer. They did that in your name and mine. We did it. May God have mercy on us.
Trump still thinks it was a great idea, and he still wants to do it again. He might get his wish if no one opposes him. He’s a lot more likely to try it or something like it than he is to happen to remember that he’s supposed to be pro-life. Listen to how many times he’s railed against immigrants. Now try to remember the last time he talked about the unborn. Which do you think he’s actually going to follow through on if he’s given the chance?
When you go to the polls tomorrow, you’re not going to have much of a chance at saving unborn babies. You’re just not. Neither party really cares to save them, both are permissive on abortion, and they’re not going to be able to take back the Supreme Court justices.
But, by creating as much friction as you can for Trump, as much of a damper on as many of his future plans as possible, you might be able to help some other beautiful children– children whom God values just as much as the unborn or your own little ones. You could.
It’s what I’m going to do, anyway.
Think about it one more time, please.
(image via Pixabay)
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