Trump-Vance's Primrose Pro-Choice Path

Let’s be clear: it’s either murder or it’s not. The problem with the Trump-Vance take on abortion is not its pro-life bent. No, it is pro-choice in a far less principled way than the pro-choice position itself is.

For decades I wistfully wished for a change in our bifurcated abortion debate. While I am unapologetically pro-life concerning abortion both because of my faith (God’s value of life) and reason (an unborn baby isn’t definably less human in any way), I have never liked the idea that one party could take me for granted.

Pro-life voters, though, have been taken for granted as the only major party alternative has grown more extreme in recent times. The Democratic Party rejected the “rare” from its Clintonian “safe, legal and rare” mantra on abortion. Now, the more pro-choice side doesn’t just say “choice” should be preserved, but a tragic thing should be celebrated.

Arguably, the earlier Democratic view felt like a concession. “No one likes that this has to happen, but sometimes it is necessary.” This fit the understanding of most people that abortion is, at least, not the ideal.

One of the few things almost all can agree on concerning the role of government is that it should protect people’s “inalienable rights” — thanks Thomas — and preeminent among those is the right to live. Governments have been charged to protect citizens from the murderous inside or outside the country.

The Declaration of Independence argues for two further rights, “liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and Democrats consider abortion access as a “right” derived from these latter two. But we can all acknowledge that we never suggest that the “pursuit of happiness,” or even “liberty,” give us the right to deprive someone else of life itself.

Set aside for a moment the most difficult, painful, ugly, but — crucially — most limited edges of the abortion debate. The cases that involve rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother dominate the discussion, but are a tiny fraction of abortions. Abortions for other, voluntary reasons (a baby would cost too much, get in the way of pursuing happiness and so on) are the vast majority of abortions.

Until this year, Republicans argued from a place of moral strength from this fact. If reason leads us to believe a baby right before birth is, indeed, just as human as after birth, why should birth status determine that human being’s right to live? Is this the only place where we would argue the right for one individual to live is overruled by another individual’s pursuit of convenience or happiness?

Say you have a neighbor who frequently wakes you up early — even on weekends — because he is unthoughtful. This might deprive you of pursuing the happiness of being well-rested. But no sane person would suggest a neighbor being annoying would lessen his right to life. Yes, being awakened early is trivial compared to bearing a child, but whether the deprivation of “happiness” is small or large, we simply have no other area in life where we say one person’s pursuit of happiness allows him or her to take another person’s very life.

The most progressive pro-choice rejoinder to this — the one that likes dropping “rare” — has always been to move the conversation away from the ugly fact that a human being is being killed. Instead, they frame the context being a bunch of fundamentalist religious zealots wanting women to lose rights.

Consider that Harris-Walz loves plenty of government regulation but is running on “freedom.” Freedom to do what? Abort babies.

Note, though, I said the Republicans no longer have the high moral ground and this was on display as Gov. Walz and Sen. Vance debated last night. As the moderators probed, it was noted that Vance had called abortion procedures “barbaric,” but now has adopted President Trump’s view that abortion should be decided on a state-by-state basis.

While there has been a “federalism” argument for removing Roe v. Wade, e.g. that the Federal government wasn’t intended to be that heavy-handed on states in regulating “medical care,” that was always in response to the Democratic suggestion that abortion is simply “medical care.” It was never a sound pro-life position.

Why? Because the most small government view of our Federal Government was that one of the few things government should do is protect life. If abortion really is a barbaric procedure resulting in depriving a human being of the right to life (the prerequisite of all other rights), if abortion is murder, there can be no “let the states decide.”

Neither Democrats nor Republicans would argue that it would be OK if California said it was OK to murder post-birth people found inconvenient while Texas took a different view.

No, murder is murder is murder is murder: it is the fundamental cornerstone of a civil government. The mainstream of the pro-choice position has done whatever gymnastics necessary to try to avoid defining unborn babies as human specifically to avoid appearing to advocate for murder.

(I think they’re wrong and many politicians who do this are insincere, and thus diabolical. Nonetheless, there are many individuals who don’t think that much about it and genuinely believe the rhetoric that somehow this isn’t murder.)

The view Sen. Vance and President Trump are now elucidating while being marginally more pro-life in practice is actually much more bankrupt morally. Vance brought it to a point when he noted his respect for his home state’s voters enshrining abortion rights. “We think abortion is murder, but we think the states should decide whether to allow it.”

This isn’t a debate on a bond for a new city park or whether to permit rezoning of some undeveloped land. This is a debate on the foundational rights of a person.

And that’s how the Republicans ceded the moral ground. If this is really something appropriate to have one state legalize and another ban, then the Democrats are right: this is simply a wrangling away of certain rights from women by the opposing party.

At times, it’s true, the pro-life camp I belong to has missed its goals because of lack of diplomacy. Going all or nothing, passing up bipartisan support for restrictions on elective abortions akin to Europe, at least, has meant no restrictions whatsoever. Abortion has often been more liberally available in the U.S. than the rest of the West. We wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to have fewer murders because zero homicides was unreachable would we?

Undermining the better for the sake of the perfect is precisely what the pro-life effort in the GOP did the last few years. The bills Republicans pushed through state legislatures were devoid of consideration of those edge cases I mentioned at the start. Thoughtful people understand the difference between elective abortion and the quandary of abortion in the context of rape victims.

More nuance has been needed than the caricature they offered. The electorate predictably rebelled and leaned hard on enshrining abortion instead.

The former president and his running mate did need to offer a course correction. But, far from being a diplomatic reset to search for ways to get closer to protecting each person’s right to live, the Trumpian GOP course is morally abhorrent to pro-choice and pro-life positions alike.

By its design, the Trump-Vance attempt to reboot from past GOP mistakes is denying a right. If the pro-choice are correct, that right is the right of women over bodily autonomy. I would argue the right discarded is instead the inalienable right to life of the baby. But in their preference for a state-by-state patchwork, let’s be clear: someone is losing a right and the Trump-Vance ticket says that is ok as long as voters approve of it.

The past position of the pro-life was, at least, principled if not always pragmatically well executed. If abortion is wrong, and every effort is toward reducing or eliminating that moral wrong that robs individuals of life itself, then restrictions put into place are not merely the capricious whims of the moment.

In the past the GOP, for all its flaws, at least charged heroically against genocide of millions of unborn on the basis that it was the moral good to stand for life. Now, it suggests, genocide is only genocide if voters think it is.

Any pro-lifers who think this moral mess worth overlooking or justifying in hopes it will at least yield a less pro-choice future will be disappointed. This is not a step to protecting the sanctity of life, but of selling out the moral compass of the movement.

A far more pro-choice America is the inevitable destination.