Trump is no champion for the pro-life cause (National Catholic)

[C C]

https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-vo...life-cause

EXCERPTS: It didn't take long after former president Donald Trump sidestepped on his opposition to abortion for pro-life leaders to step up to the plate and remind him that the moral stakes of this issue are non-negotiable...

[...] Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life called Trump's waffling "a step in the right direction." ... Does she give Trump credit for being on his third wife?

[...] Trump said he thought the issue should be left to the states. That was Monday, April 8. After the state supreme court in Arizona reinstated an 1864 law banning abortions except to save the life of the mother the next day, Trump shuffled yet again. "Yeah, they did," Trump said about the court's judges when asked if they went too far. "That'll be straightened out, and as you know it's all about states' rights." Will he straighten that out before or after he straightens out the war in Ukraine? Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban, he said, "No."

That phrase, "states' rights." Where have we heard that before?

Ross Douthat, at The New York Times had a fine piece that argued Trump's rise to political power is part of the reason for the diminished support for the pro-life cause:

If you set out to champion the rights of the most vulnerable human beings while promising protection and support for women in their most vulnerable state, and your leader is a man famous for his playboy lifestyle who exudes brash sexism and contempt for weakness, people are going to have some legitimate questions about whether they can trust you to make good on your promises of love and care.

This is a related, but different, charge of hypocrisy from the more standard one, and the difference is significant. The consistent ethic of life challenges Catholics, and all people of goodwill, to grasp that championing the rights of all vulnerable persons strengthens the argument for championing the rights of the most vulnerable. Regrettably, many people do not see an issue that is inescapably and profoundly personal like abortion on the same plane as issues like immigration or the death penalty which do not necessarily affect them or those close to them personally. The hypocrisy that Douthat highlights touches on the personal and sexual... (MORE - missing details)

[Syne]

Trump's doing what most politicians do. Hew to the middle approaching a general election.

But we've all known that he was never a dyed in the wool conservative. So none of this is a surprise to anyone who's paid attention.

[Magical Realist]

Trump is an unprincipled con artist who will say and do whatever will garner him the most votes. His equivocating on the issue of abortion exposes the inherent limitations of that strategy.

[Yazata]

Trump may be "no champion for the pro-life cause", but who is better? Joe Biden??

"That phrase, "states' rights." Where have we heard that before?"

How about the United States Constitution?

The (typically ignored) 10th Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

https://constitution.congress.gov/consti...ndment-10/

The Constitution never mentions abortion, neither granting power over it to the federal government, nor prohibiting the various States from legislating on it. Hence, Constitutionally abortion would appear to be a State matter.

So Trump is entirely correct.

[Syne]

Appointing judges who overthrew Roe is more of an accomplishment than conservatives could have expected... from any president.

Leftists like to demonize state's rights because they are inherently fascist, and that involves the federal government being able to exert total supremacy over all the states.

[confused2]

In fairness abortion probably wasn't much of a thing in 1787 (when the constitution was written) .. if it had been a thing is it likely that a woman's freedom to choose (or not) would have been included in the constitution?

[Syne]

No one has the "freedom" to kill another human.

[stryder]

No one has the "freedom" to kill another human.

I knew of a girl that was a carer to a child that suffered from severe disabilities and met the child a couple of times in it's short life.

The child suffered severe brain damage and couldn't function like a normal child could. The reason the child was suffering such disabilities was a mixture of her parents having both been heavy drug users and the fact that they used the birthing of child to gain benefits to fund their habit. They went so far as to mistreat and cause even more sufferage to the child just to increase the benefits they could gain. (They left the child to it's own devices and didn't even feed it, it was left to eat out of dog bowl.)

In the end the child ended up in care (Thus the carer I knew), however due to the amount of damage and suffering, the child eventually passed.

In that particular instance it was cruel for the child to have ever been born, since all it knew in it's brief lifetime was sufferage and dehabilitating brain damage.

[Syne]

No, the cruelty of others doesn't grant a "freedom" to kill the innocent. It does grant the responsibility to punish the guilty. Where was this child born with drug abuse damage that no one reported it to authorities and the child removed from their care? Was it a home birth? Or did the hospital not do its job?

Saying that drug addicts, simply by dint of their drug abuse, should be allowed to kill babies is the worst possible scenario of two wrongs not making a right.