I was wrong about Trump & Roe, but Dobbs is a Pyrrhic victory.

hen I am wrong I will admit it. In 2016 Catholic Trump apol­o­gists made abor­tion the damn near sole ratio­nale to vote for him. Trump promised! they said. He pinky swore! He’ll get maybe three appoint­ments to the Supreme Court; that could shift the bal­ance! We might see Roe over­turned! Who do you want fill­ing seats on the Court—Trump or Hillary? Do you like abor­tion, Alt?

Non­sense, I said. Vot­ing Repub­li­can has nev­er led to Roe being over­turned before. Why should any­one think it will be dif­fer­ent this time? GOP appoint­ments gave us Roe and upheld Roe. I wrote a whole blog arti­cle to prove it; it’s one of my top ten posts. Eisen­how­er and Nixon, I remind­ed read­ers, appoint­ed five of the sev­en jus­tices who vot­ed for Roe. Nixon, Ford, Rea­gan, and the first Bush appoint­ed every jus­tice who upheld Roe in Planned Par­ent­hood v. Casey. There was no rea­son to think there’d be any oth­er out­come this time, just because Trump said. Every GOP can­di­date for pres­i­dent says.

I still think the log­ic of that is sound. I still say there was no rea­son on earth to think Trump would put Roe in any greater jeop­ardy.

But I was wrong.

•••

Okay, I got that out of the way.

In May, soon after some­one leaked the draft deci­sion of Dobbs, Catholic Trump apol­o­gist Dave Arm­strong got on Face­book, and he puffed up his chest and crowed. “I was a prophet!” he declared. “[A]nd Scott Eric Alt was a false prophet!” For Arm­strong, Dobbs proves that vot­ing for Trump was the only right thing to do:

Based on what we know so far, praise God for Pres­i­dent Trump. The three Jus­tices he appoint­ed will save the day: no thanks to left­ist or “mod­er­ate” and “new” pro-lif­ers like Alt, Mark Shea, Dea­con Steven Grey­danus, and Sim­cha Fish­er.

In June, after the Court over­turned Roe offi­cial­ly, Arm­strong logged onto his blog and denounced me and Mark and Sim­cha with sen­ten­tious thun­der.

Oth­er­wise ortho­dox Catholics like Mark Shea and Scott Eric Alt and Sim­cha Fish­er vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton and/or Joe Biden, and jus­ti­fied these atro­cious vot­ing deci­sions with ridicu­lous ratio­nales that they would be more pro-life than Don­ald Trump, and that there was no dif­fer­ence between the two par­ties. May his­to­ry record how utter­ly wrong they were. I would cite some of the words they said, but I wish to be at least as char­i­ta­ble as I can on this day, and don’t wish to “pile on”. I hearti­ly thank all of you who have vot­ed Repub­li­can, and espe­cial­ly if you vot­ed for Don­ald Trump. You had a direct role in mak­ing this pos­si­ble. Kudos! I thank you on behalf of all the chil­dren in the womb who will now be allowed to leave those wombs and have a life in this world.

The grotesque self-con­grat­u­la­tion aside, I want to com­ment on two points.

• First, Arm­strong treats the fact that I vot­ed for Pres­i­dent Biden as a strike against my ortho­doxy.

I am “oth­er­wise ortho­dox,” he says. Where does he get the notion that the Church dic­tates for whom a Catholic may or may not vote? There is no such law; I’ve point­ed that out over and over and over again. (See here and here and here.) This is what the Church actu­al­ly says:

Catholics often face dif­fi­cult choic­es about how to vote. This is why it is so impor­tant to vote accord­ing to a well-formed con­science that per­ceives the prop­er rela­tion­ship among moral goods. [Be care­ful, though; pay atten­tion to the qual­i­fi­ca­tion at the end:] A Catholic can­not vote for a can­di­date who favors a pol­i­cy pro­mot­ing an intrin­si­cal­ly evil act, such as abor­tion, euthana­sia, assist­ed sui­cide, delib­er­ate­ly sub­ject­ing work­ers or the poor to sub­hu­man liv­ing con­di­tions, redefin­ing mar­riage in ways that vio­late its essen­tial mean­ing, or racist behav­ior [Did you catch that last one, Trump apol­o­gists?], if the voter’s intent is to sup­port that posi­tion. In such cas­es, a Catholic would be guilty of for­mal coop­er­a­tion in grave evil.

A Catholic must intend to sup­port these posi­tions. With­out that intent, there is no “for­mal coop­er­a­tion.”

At the same time, a vot­er should not use a can­di­date’s oppo­si­tion to an intrin­sic evil to jus­ti­fy indif­fer­ence or inat­ten­tive­ness to oth­er impor­tant moral issues involv­ing human life and dig­ni­ty.

In oth­er words, the Church specif­i­cal­ly says that Catholics can’t make abor­tion the sole con­sid­er­a­tion in their vot­ing choic­es. Trump apol­o­gists who made Roe the only vari­able in their moral cal­cu­lus were them­selves vio­lat­ing and mis­rep­re­sent­ing Church teach­ing.

When all can­di­dates hold a posi­tion that pro­motes an intrin­si­cal­ly evil act, the con­sci­en­tious vot­er faces a dilem­ma. The vot­er may decide to take the extra­or­di­nary step of not vot­ing for any can­di­date or, after care­ful delib­er­a­tion, may decide to vote for the can­di­date deemed less like­ly to advance such a moral­ly flawed posi­tion and more like­ly to pur­sue oth­er authen­tic human goods.

But who does the “deem­ing” here? Do the Amer­i­can bish­ops study the can­di­dates and issue a bull, bind­ing upon Catholics, instruct­ing us that they have “deemed” x the can­di­date “more like­ly to pur­sue oth­er authen­tic human goods”? Did the bish­ops pub­lish such a bull in 2016 and 2020? Or does the Church mean for Catholics to pray and make these deci­sions for them­selves, answer­able only to God and their own con­science?

I vot­ed for Joe Biden. I broke no Church law or Church teach­ing in doing so. If I were pro-abor­tion, that would be a mark against my ortho­doxy. If I vot­ed for Biden express­ly because I want abor­tion to be legal every­where, that would be a mark against my ortho­doxy. But even Arm­strong knows bet­ter than to attribute such views to me.

• Sec­ond, Arm­strong believes that the Dobbs deci­sion affirms the wis­dom and right­ness of Trump vot­ers.

It’s as though Arm­strong thinks Trump was nec­es­sary to achieve a pro-life cul­ture, that it could­n’t be done with Mrs. Clin­ton in office, that women could­n’t be per­suad­ed not to have abor­tions and assist­ed in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. It’s as though he thinks you can’t reject both Don­ald Trump and abor­tion. I don’t accept that.

I think Arm­strong misunderstands—though he is hard­ly alone in this—my real ratio­nale for vot­ing against Trump in 2016 and 2020. He seems to think that, if only I could have been per­suad­ed that Trump would appoint the right jus­tices, if only I could have seen that Roe would fall, I would have vot­ed for him. None of my oth­er objec­tions would have mat­tered if only I could have seen that One Thing.

But no.

Even if I knew infal­li­bly, in 2016, that the Court would over­turn Roe, and that every one of Trump’s appoint­ments would vote to over­turn it, I. Would. Not. Have. Vot­ed. For. Don­ald. Trump.

Nev­er. And I won’t vote for him if he is the nom­i­nee next year.

I know that will make the Dave Arm­strongs and Leila Millers fume with “I told you so” pique. But there it is.

I knew as ear­ly as 2015 that Don­ald Trump was an exis­ten­tial threat to the nation. Every­thing that hap­pened dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion con­firmed me in that view. And cer­tain­ly Jan­u­ary 6 should have set­tled that ques­tion for good. When your loud­est and most vocif­er­ous sup­port­ers stage a vio­lent insur­rec­tion at the Capi­tol build­ing, and come with zip ties and rope and pipe bombs and a gal­lows, in order to over­turn a duly cer­ti­fied elec­tion, then you are an exis­ten­tial threat to the nation. And you can no longer puff out your chest and call your­self pro-life.

You can’t accept mur­der as the price for sav­ing life. You can’t accept an insur­rec­tion as the price for stop­ping abor­tion.

This is not open to debate. Arm­strong may crow: “I was right about Roe!” I was right about Trump being an exis­ten­tial threat to the nation. I was right about Trump car­ing more about pow­er and self than any­thing else. A mob of insur­rec­tion­ists storm­ing the Capi­tol build­ing dur­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of an elec­tion is not an accept­able price to pay for end­ing abor­tion. If you think oth­er­wise, you are a Con­se­quen­tial­ist of a very dan­ger­ous kind. You are will­ing to kill the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca itself if you think you can save some babies by doing so.

There is no ques­tion abor­tion is evil. But it is not the only evil, and there is no rea­son I must be forced to accept dif­fer­ent evils as the price for end­ing this one.

So Roe was over­turned. So what? If we can’t have the pre­sump­tion of free elec­tions in this coun­try, if we can’t trust that the los­er will gra­cious­ly con­cede to the win­ner, if we can’t have a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er, if it’s con­ceiv­able that an angry mob will try to mur­der Sen­a­tors and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to stop them from cer­ti­fy­ing an elec­tion, then we have far larg­er wor­ries than abor­tion. Catholics can only fight for an eth­ic of life in a sta­ble nation. “The only moral way to pro­tect the unborn in the polit­i­cal sphere,” Dawn Eden Gold­stein wrote on Twit­ter, “is by win­ning hearts for life with­in a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy.”

Gwen­dolyn Brooks saw it too.

 

First fight. Then fid­dle. Ply the slip­ping string

With feath­ery sor­cery; muz­zle the note

With hurt­ing love; the music that they wrote

Bewitch, bewil­der. Qual­i­fy to sing

Thread­wise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing

For the dear instru­ment to bear. Devote

The bow to silks and hon­ey. Be remote

A while from mal­ice and from mur­der­ing,

But first to arms, to armor. Car­ry hate

In front of you and har­mo­ny behind.

Be deaf to music and to beau­ty blind.

Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late

For hav­ing first to civ­i­lize a space

Where­in to play your vio­lin with grace.

 

Hav­ing a gen­uine pro-life eth­ic in a nation—and that is much larg­er than just pro­tect­ing babies from abortion—is a vio­lin to play with grace. But when your democ­ra­cy is threat­ened by a tin­pot fas­cist and his devo­tees and syco­phants and apol­o­gists, it’s far more nec­es­sary to “car­ry … har­mo­ny behind.” When mass killings occur Every. Fuck­ing. Day. and the GOP does noth­ing mean­ing­ful to stop them but instead croaks hol­low “thoughts and prayers,” they are not pro-life, they have no busi­ness claim­ing to be pro-life, and we must “first … civ­i­lize a space.”

Once upon a time I thought I would be hap­py to see Roe over­turned. But now?

It’s a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry.

•••

So then, Alt! I always knew you were a fak­er, a pro-abor­tion left­ist!

No. You lie. My views about abor­tion are clear; I have stat­ed them time and again, I have not once changed them, I have no plans to, and I am not going to repeat myself in a point­less effort to reas­sure my crit­ics who are addict­ed to calumny—as though being against abor­tion is a bap­tismal promise I must con­stant­ly renew.

Dobbs v. Jack­son is a good. But it is a lim­it­ed good. It was always going to be a lim­it­ed good; all it does is return abor­tion to the states. Some will out­law abor­tion alto­geth­er; some will allow it with restric­tions; some will allow it for any rea­son at any time. Women who live in states where abor­tion is ille­gal can, if they are able, trav­el and have an abor­tion in anoth­er state.

The good of Dobbs, such as it is, is even more lim­it­ed when states want to actu­al­ly pros­e­cute women for hav­ing abor­tions. Seek­ing to pun­ish the scared and the des­per­ate is about vengeance, not sav­ing lives. Before Roe v. Wade, women who had abor­tions were nev­er pros­e­cut­ed, and for a very sane rea­son:

Abor­tion laws tar­get­ed those who per­formed abor­tion, not women. In fact, the states express­ly treat­ed women as the sec­ond “vic­tim” of abor­tion; state courts express­ly called the woman a sec­ond “vic­tim.” Abor­tion­ists were the exclu­sive tar­get of the law.

For exam­ple, accord­ing to the arti­cle:

• Cal­i­for­nia law said: “The abor­tee is con­sid­ered the vic­tim of the crime.”
• DC law said: “She is regard­ed as [the abor­tion­ist’s] vic­tim, rather than an accom­plice.”
• Mary­land law said: “[A] woman upon whom an abor­tion has been per­formed is regard­ed by the law as a vic­tim of the crime, rather than a par­tic­i­pant in it.”
• Min­neso­ta law said: “[The moth­er is] the vic­tim of a cru­el act.”
• South Dako­ta law said: “[The moth­er] does not, by con­sent­ing to the unlaw­ful oper­a­tion, become an accom­plice in the crime. She should be regard­ed as the vic­tim of the crime, rather than a par­tic­i­pant in it.”
• A Texas court in 1915 ruled: “It has been so many times decid­ed by this court that the woman upon whom an abor­tion is com­mit­ted is not an accom­plice that we regard the ques­tion as set­tled.”

At least in this regard, pre-Roe law had com­pas­sion on women. It had com­pas­sion on the poor and the des­per­ate. But now, anti-abor­tion zealots are hun­gry not for jus­tice but vengeance. They search for oppor­tu­nites, not to pro­tect babies, not to help moth­ers, not to ren­der the deeds of mer­cy, but to exact vengeance on the poor and the scared and the des­per­ate. Some even sug­gest that women who cross state lines to have a legal abor­tion be pros­e­cut­ed mere­ly because the state in which they reside has out­lawed abor­tion. Because abor­tion is ille­gal here, you may not get one there. Is the ret­ri­bu­tion of a police state your pro-life vic­to­ry?

So the Court over­turned Roe. The price was far too high. The 1/6 insur­rec­tion­ists and those who sup­port or con­done them still loom over future elec­tions, and the same Trump who made 1/6 pos­si­ble, who egged those trai­tors on, and who pals around with anti-Semi­tes, still holds the GOP and GOP vot­ers hostage to his ego and his desire for pow­er. The GOP has been over­tak­en by nation­al­ists, which is just a polite word for fas­cists. Anti-abor­tion states lust to exact ret­ribu­tive jus­tice on women who, once upon a time before Roe, were under­stood to be vic­tims in need of com­pas­sion.

I’d rather have Roe back and lose all those oth­er things. Quod scrip­si, scrip­si.

•••

I hate abor­tion; I think abor­tion is mur­der; I think the child in the womb has a right to life equal to the moth­er’s, equal to mine, equal to yours, equal to every­one’s. I think that right ought to be pro­tect­ed in law.

But the notion that Dobbs is some kind of pro-life vic­to­ry is utter fan­ta­sy. I’m sor­ry, but I can’t join in the rejoic­ing.

That’s my reac­tion to Dobbs.