Can we conservatives agree to reject the reasoning of children – that if you don’t get exactly what you want to the extent you want at the time you want it, you’ll take your ball and go home and end up with nothing? I’m tired of conservatives, or at least alleged conservatives, who reason like this.
Some people are loudly announcing – because the announcement of their moral awesomeness is the point – not to support Donald Trump over Planned Parenthood poster girl Kamala Harris because he is somehow insufficiently pro-life. This is unbelievably dumb. Here’s a fun fact. You’re never going to find a politician who is exactly the same as you on all the issues that are very important to you. Donald Trump is never going to match you 100% in everything important to you. But he will match you about 90%, maybe 95%, of the time, while Late Term Kamala will match you 0% of the time. The hallmark of adulthood is the ability to make choices, often between suboptimal options. Do that.
This kind of posturing is stupid, politically and otherwise. Donald Trump is, objectively, the most pro-life president we’ve ever had. He managed to get rid of Roe v. Wade through his Supreme Court justices. That was a massive achievement. Now, what were we promising when we said we would get rid of Roe? We were promising we would allow individual states to make their own abortion decisions because that wasn’t something the federal government should do. The Supreme Court adopted that reasoning. That’s what Dobbs says. Various states have subsequently made various decisions about abortion. In some states, this barbaric practice is essentially banned. In others, it’s open season on fetuses. Is it exactly what we want here? No. Is it better than it was? Hell yes.
And we have the opportunity to make things even better if we don’t screw it up by shooting ourselves in the foot with gratuitous, ridiculous, moral posturing that inevitably leads to defeat. But some of the pro-life people, who would rather be pure than successful, are dumping on Trump because Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do. He’s allowing states to make this decision. I’m not sure why anyone thinks it’s a great idea to promise the American people “A,” and when the American people trust you enough to give you “A,” decide, “No, we’re actually going to give you ‘B,’ which is something very different.” I have a lot of trouble being lectured about morality by people who want to make me a liar and think that’s OK.
I would like to end abortion. Do you know how we can end abortion? We can convince most Americans to also want to end abortion. But right now, most Americans don’t want a complete abortion ban. That’s not where they’re at. And why is that? Because we haven’t convinced them yet.
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Democracy is hard work. We can’t dictate. We have to convince people of things. And yes, that includes convincing them that things that we oppose really, really deeply, like killing babies, are bad. It’s sad enough our society has a mindset that makes killing babies an option. It’s even sadder when we somehow can’t be troubled to go out and make the case to our fellow citizens that it’s bad to kill babies. Instead, some pro-life folks want to wave some magic wand and impose a fantasy law that’s never going to get passed, and that is blatantly unconstitutional. It is not happening.
Donald Trump has acknowledged this reality, the reality that a critical mass of Americans is not with us yet and that the Constitution says every state can make its own decisions. Trump is acting reasonably by trying to achieve a lasting pro-life result over time instead of demanding an instant result that cannot happen and would not last. Both procedurally and substantively, the federal government cannot impose a ban on abortions. That would never pass Congress, and even if it did, it would violate Dobbs. Once again, as we’ve been staying for the last century, this is not a decision for the federal government because abortion doesn’t appear in the Constitution, and it has to be decided at the state level. This means that some states are going to make terrible decisions. That’s how federalism works.
If you want to eliminate abortion, and I do, there is no shortcut. You have to change peoples’ minds. You have to go make the case that life is better than death. And it will not happen overnight. For some reason, people don’t want to sully their hands making the argument to people about why abortion is bad. And they haven’t made it, at least not well enough to enough people. Normally sensible states, when an abortion amendment appears on their ballot, have chosen much looser abortion rules than we would prefer. Is it because these people in red states are bad people? No, it’s because we haven’t done the job of convincing them. And, insanely, incrementalism has gotten a bad name. The options voters get are no abortions ever or abortions for everybody all the time, and the government will pay for them. Neither is what the vast majority of Americans want. And when given the choice, even in red states, they go for Option B.
The only way we can win is by convincing people to embrace life. We can’t force them to do it. If we try, as we have seen, we get a reaction that ends up creating more abortions.
And nothing is dumber than saying, “I’m not voting for Donald Trump because he’s insufficiently anti-abortion despite having overturned Roe v. Wade!” It’s hard to understand the depth of this dumbness when his opponent would legalize killing kids on the way out of the birth canal. Until Jesus gets on the ballot, you will never have the chance to vote for someone perfect. Being an adult means accepting reality and making choices. You have to choose between the lesser of two evils, though I’m not convinced Trump is evil. Choosing is what adults do. Mick Jagger was right – you can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, as we saw with Dobbs getting overturned, sometimes you get what you need.
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