The pro-life right's Trump problem building a 'culture of life'

The folks celebrating the Dobbs decision this week are, shall we say, an optimistic lot. Some of them genuinely believe that taking away the right to abortion is something that will someday be celebrated by the larger society -- that while it might be controversial now, it sets the stage for a broader societal reconsideration of what "life" means and who we protect.

"I believe we will defeat abortion in the long run, just as the abolitionists defeated slavery," Tim Carney writes for the Washington Examiner. "I believe that in our children's lifetimes, American society will agree that abortion is an intolerable evil and American society will welcome every child, expected or unexpected."

Maybe. I am pro-choice, but the possibility has occurred to me that sometime in the near future I'll be judged a monster for that position by, well, people like me who are just trying to do their moral best.

But Carney and his fellow travelers have a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goal: Donald Trump.

Signifying heroes and villains, good intentions and bad

One of the bigger struggles I've had during the Trump Era has been with how to identify people -- the folks with whom I disagree, the ones who are doing things I sometimes even find harmful -- who are nonetheless acting in good faith.

There are personal reasons for this. No need to get into the details publicly, but there are persons I was once close to, despite our profound differences politically, because I thought we at least shared a commitment to speaking as truthfully as we could, to seeking the Truth -- even if we defined that somewhat differently.

Then Donald Trump came along and I found out I was mistaken.

I've lost a few friends in recent years. And yet: I refuse to believe that most people are cartoon villains. (Again, the Trump Years have tested this.) The vast majority of humans -- I really, firmly believe -- understand themselves to be acting for the right reasons and noble motivations. It would not resolve our differences to understand people as they see themselves, and we don't have to accept those self-judgments as definitive, but I still think it's important to try. Even now. At least for the sake being somewhat more realistic in our assessments, and not least because the people we now define as our enemies are also our fellow citizens, and the opposite of figuring out how to live with them is too terrible to think about. 

This brings us to abortion, naturally.

On the end of Roe, and the 'culture of life'

Roe v. Wade ended today, and I'm more torn about this than someone with my politics should be.

Oh, on the whole I think the decision is bad. I'm pro-choice -- ultimately, carefully and sometimes by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin -- because I believe that women's health and freedom really are implicated in the abortion debate.

But...

I grew up among pro-life Christians. I know them, know their hearts. I know -- though I disagree, ultimately -- that many of them truly believe they are saving babies from murder, and if you thought you were saving babies from being murdered, wouldn't you be rejoicing today?

My old friends are rejoicing.

I am not.

Some of this is self-preservation, I suppose. I am married to an ardently pro-choice woman who -- in the brief moments we had to visit earlier today -- vowed resistance. And I'd be lying if I said my marriage didn't influence my politics on this issue. I don't think that's a bad thing. What's the point of joining your life to someone else's if you're not willing to let their perspective nudge and maybe even enlarge your own?

So here's the thing: I don't expect today's decision to actually produce a "culture of life."

That's the kind of thing I've seen some well-meaning conservative folks talk about today. It's not good enough to merely outlaw abortion, they say. The next step -- using all the tools at their disposal -- is to create a nation where every pregnant woman welcomes every act of conception and, ultimately, every child into a world ready to support them in thriving and surviving.

It's noble, I'll grant that. And maybe impossibly utopian. I doubt (for instance) you'll ever completely rid the world of demand for abortions.

But also: I'll believe it when I see it.

The pro-life movement has had 50 years to build a culture of life, to prepare for this moment and to entice women into making different choices. And they ... haven't. Maternal death rates have risen in America in recent decades. Black maternal death rates are even worse. And the states that have fought most vigorously to outlaw abortion are also often the states that have managed to avoid or delay the Medicaid expansion that would help the poorest would-be mothers immeasurably. 

Maybe that will change now.

I doubt it.

And if I'm wrong, I'll still have a few horse-and-cart questions about why they waited so long.

The committed pro-life people I respect most liken abortion to the Holocaust, and Roe v. Wade to Plessy v. Ferguson. The possibility sometimes haunts me. Am I the baddie? There's a possibility that I -- and millions of people like me -- will one day be judged moral monsters. That's distressing.

For now, though, I know that many if not most Americans opt -- in their hearts, and sometimes even at the polls --  for the impossible middle ground on this topic: Finding abortion unsettling, and yet fearful of losing the option entirely. That's where I'm at. Which satisfies almost none of my friends on either side of the issue.

The end result is this: I can't join my pro-life friends in rejoicing, even if I understand why they do so. I suspect today's decision will increase the sum of human misery in America. I hope I am wrong.

I am trying to figure out how to talk to my pro-life friends about Trump

 

A common refrain at this week's Republican National Convention was that Donald Trump "is the most pro-life president we've ever had." No matter where you stand on the topic, I think there's a fair case to be made that's the truth. He has appointed judges who emboldened state legislatures to take a fresh run at knocking down Roe v. Wade. The right to abortion may never be entirely stricken from precedent, given how Chief Justice John Roberts likes to operate, but it seems likely to be greatly narrowed into near-oblivion over the next few years. We'll see.

I grew up in small town Kansas. I attended an evangelical Mennonite Brethren college. A number of people I care about -- and love -- are passionately anti-abortion. This makes things uneasy between us: I don't much love abortion and I think the decision carries moral weight, but I think there are substantial issues of women's freedom and autonomy involved. So I end up on the pro-choice side of the ledger. But I respect why my pro-life friends feel the way they do.

This fall, I suspect many or most of them will be voting for Trump.

I think this is a tremendous mistake. Trump's indifference to life beyond the womb is well-documented by now -- his willingness to separate migrant families at the border, his eagerness to downplay COVID-19 testing that could save lives and prevent outbreaks because he thinks the numbers make him look bad, his gleeful defense and pardon of war criminals. Given his history of infidelity and promiscuity, I feel pretty sure his pro-life position is transactional.

Some of my pro-life friends are aware of this. One told me, a couple of years ago, that he knew Donald Trump was a bad person -- "but I also think maybe I should thank him, you know?"

There is no way this friend will ever vote for Joe Biden. I don't think I could ever persuade him too. If you think abortion is murder, how could you ever vote for a candidate or party that supports keeping it legal?

And yet: I am convinced that four more years of Donald Trump will be disastrous. That democracy will be grievously injured and that Americans, particularly minority Americans, will suffer. I'm honestly not sure that's avoidable at this point, anyway, but it feels more certain to me if we have a president who -- it seems obvious to me -- is intent on sowing division for his own advantage over one who might actually cares about things beside himself.

So I want to make the case to my pro-life friends that they should not vote for Trump.

But I am not sure that I can, or that the outcome is possible. They see the same country, the same man, that we do. They will vote for him anyway, because the thing that matters most to them is saving unborn lives. I get that. But I am worried for all of us who are already here. I feel like I share at least 90 percent of my morality with my pro-life friends. But that last few percentage points, whew. Their morality tells them to vote for Trump. Mine tells me to do anything but. I am not sure there is a meeting place between those two points.

Why are evangelicals supporting Trump? (Try abortion.)

Damon Linker muses at The Week:

Why would voters who engage in politics in large part because of their attachment to a social-conservative agenda rally around a blustering, bragging vulgarian who's on his third marriage; who specializes in such un-Christ-like behavior as mocking a reporter with a disability; who favors such policies as rounding up and deporting millions, torturing terrorism suspects, banning the members of specific religions from entering the United States, and striking first with nuclear weapons; and perhaps most pertinent of all, who shows no interest in, knowledge of, or sympathy for the social-conservative agenda?

Linker goes on to list a variety of reasons — ranging from a seemingly misguided belief that Trump has recently accepted Jesus into his heart to (more to the point) a belief that Trump will basically act as a mob enforcer "protecting" their neighborhood. One word Linker surprisingly never uses: Abortion.

Here's Pew: 

About half of white evangelical Protestant voters (52%) say the issue of abortion will be “very important” in deciding who to vote for in the 2016 election, as do 46% of Catholics. By contrast, 37% of religious “nones” and 31% of white mainline Protestants say abortion will factor prominently in their voting decision. But even among white evangelicals and Catholics, more consider issues like the economy, terrorism, foreign policy and immigration to be very important than say the same about abortion.

If anything, I'd say that understates abortion as a factor for evangelical voters. Not all of them are single-issue voters, as the Pew numbers indicate. But my years spent among conservative Christians suggests to me that there are many of them who vote almost exclusively on the abortion issue: There is literally nothing more important to them — indeed, for many, there is literally nothing else important to them.

Now: Donald doesn't seem like a likely candidate for pro-life president. (Indeed, there's reason to believe he's personally benefited from the right to choose.)  But there are a couple of other factors:

• Pro-life voters will never, ever vote for Hillary Clinton. They're not dumb: They see every outside-the-norm thing Donald has done and said in recent months, but they identify her so strongly with advocacy for abortion rights that they see Hillary as the infinitely worse option.

• Donald has hinted he'll defer to conservative sensibilities on appointment to the Supreme Court. That seems iffy, but it gives pro-life voters something to throw the dice on.

For such voters, it boils down to this: A slight chance Donald will aid their fight against abortion is better than zero chance that Hillary will. It's the Pascal's Wager of the election.

Thomas Frank got punk'd

A few years back, Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?" made a big splash nationally. His basic thesis was this: Republicans won votes by promising to concentrate on issues, like abortion, dear to social conservatives—but once in office focused mostly on an economic agenda of helping big corporations and giving the poor the shaft.

Maybe that was true a decade ago, but now? Republicans won a lot of elections at the state and Congressional elections in 2010 largely because people were so frustrated with the economy and wanted something done. Instead of economic turnarounds, though, we've been given...action on abortion.

That certainly seems to be the case in Pennsylvania, where the Legislature is working on a bill that would compel doctors to show women ultrasounds of their fetuses before performing an abortion. What has the Legislature—or Gov. Tom Corbett—done to advance the economy here? Beats me.

I'm not one to belittle culture war issues. But I can't help think we got bait-and-switched. I remember Tom Corbett talking (somewhat stupdly) jobs during the 2010 campaign, not abortion. And certainly exit polls in 2010 indicated that the economy was a big reason voters were turning to Republicans.

Don't get me wrong: Pennsylvania Republicans have also been hot on the trail of helping big corporations and giving the poor the shaft. Overall, though, it sure seems like we were voting for an economic agenda—and the social agenda snuck in under that cover. Time for Thomas Frank to revise his thesis.

Oklahoma Republicans: It's OK if doctors lie to women so they don't have abortions

I don't write about abortion very often because, well, it's not a subject I'm very partisan about. I'm instinctively uncomfortable with the procedure; I also suspect that women's liberties really are bound up (to some extent) in the freedom to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term. There's lots I find sympathetic -- and reprehensible -- about both sides of the political debate, so I try to stay out of it as much as possible.

Still, a new law passed in Oklahoma to reduce abortions is really, really awful:

The second measure passed into law Tuesday protects doctors from malpractice suits if they decide not to inform the parents of a unborn baby that the fetus has birth defects. The intent of the bill is to prevent parents from later suing doctors who withhold information to try to influence them against having an abortion.

In other words, if your doctor doesn't want you to have an abortion, he can keep critical information about your fetus-baby's health from you on purpose -- and have the sanction of the state of Oklahoma in doing so. It's a huge interference in the doctor-patient relationship, and a hugely burdensome one at that.

Why burdensome?

For one thing: Women in Oklahoma have much less reason to trust their doctors now. The relationship between patients and doctors is more than a business transaction for services rendered; it involves the feelings and decisions of people at the most vulnerable points in their lives. That's why the doctor-patient relationship has been treated among society's most sacred -- right up there with client-attorney and priest-confessor. This action by Oklahoma Republicans erodes the foundation of that relationship: If you know your doctor has state sanction to lie to you (even if by omission) the only safe thing to do during a pregnancy is go to two, three or more doctors to ensure you're getting sound advice. Most women don't have the financial resources to do that. Once again, restrictions against abortion are really restrictions against abortion for poor women.

For another thing: A doctor's decision now can commit a family -- independent of their own choices in the matter -- to a lifetime of medical bills and hard work to support a child with birth defects. Don't get me wrong: I admire people like Sarah Palin who choose to carry a Down's Syndrome fetus to term. But such decisions are hugely burdensome and, yes, costly to the families that make them. Entering the delivery room without such knowledge -- when your doctor has that knowledge -- is an unconscionable burden on those parents.

Finally, there's the simple matter of the truth. Truth is important. Period.

Again, I understand why people can be virulently opposed to abortion. But sanctioning lies as a means of reducing abortion seems a twisted and corrupt way to achieve the goal. Oklahoma Republicans believe it's ok for your doctor to lie to you. That's simply awful.

UPDATE: Not to mention it's paternalistic in a way we simply don't allow in other phases of the doctor-patient relationship. There was a time doctors didn't tell you you had untreatable cancer because they wanted you to die with a minimum of fuss and worry. But those days are long gone. Except for women in Oklahoma.