Vote Republican to stop abortion! and other myths.

rump sup­port­ers over­nu­mer­ous for men­tion promise, with prog­nos­ti­ca­tion and crys­tal-ball cer­tain­ty, that a vote for Trump will help the pro-life cause of stop­ping abor­tion, and this mat­ters above all. He will pro­mote the right leg­is­la­tion, he will appoint the right jus­tices. Right.

Now it so hap­pens that facts mat­ter in this dis­cus­sion, and because facts mat­ter, I went and checked how the indi­vid­ual jus­tices vot­ed in Roe v. Wade, and then checked out who appoint­ed them.

The Court ruled 7–2 in favor of abor­tion rights.

Major­i­ty:

• Har­ry Black­mun (appoint­ed by Nixon, a Repub­li­can)
• War­ren Burg­er (appoint­ed by Nixon, a Repub­li­can)
• William O. Dou­glas (appoint­ed by FDR)
• William J. Bren­nan (appoint­ed by Eisen­how­er, a Repub­li­can)
• Pot­ter Stew­art (appoint­ed by Eisen­how­er, a Repub­li­can)
• Thur­good Mar­shall (appoint­ed by LBJ)
• Lewis Pow­ell (appoint­ed by Nixon, a Repub­li­can)

Five of the sev­en jus­tices were Repub­li­can appointees. In the minor­i­ty were William Rehn­quist, a Nixon appointee, and Byron White, a Kennedy appointee. A Demo­c­ra­t­ic appointee wrote the dis­sent in Roe v. Wade. Inter­est­ing.

Next, I checked how the vote went in Planned Par­ent­hood v. Casey, when Roe was nar­row­ly upheld by a 5–4 Court deci­sion.

Major­i­ty:

• San­dra Day O’Con­nor (appoint­ed by Rea­gan)
• Antho­ny Kennedy (appoint­ed by Rea­gan)
• David Souter (appoint­ed by George H.W. Bush)
• John Paul Stevens (appoint­ed by Ger­ald Ford)
• Har­ry Black­mun (appoint­ed by Nixon)

All of the major­i­ty in Casey were Repub­li­can appoint­ments. The sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic appoint­ment on the court at the time, Byron White (appoint­ed by JFK), vot­ed to over­turn Roe.

Now, I am per­fect­ly aware—lest any should object with per­cus­sive objec­tion at this point—that Pres­i­dent Rea­gan’s orig­i­nal choice for the Supreme Court seat filled by Antho­ny Kennedy was Robert Bork, and that had the Sen­ate con­firmed him, the Court would have over­turned Roe in 1992. And yet even Bork him­self once admit­ted that it would­n’t have mat­tered, because a lat­er Court would have end­ed up restor­ing Roe any­way. (Bork said this in an inter­view in 1996 with Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Alan Brink­ley, which took place at the 92nd Street Y.)

Bork was defeat­ed because of a vis­cer­al cam­paign against him in the U.S. Sen­ate, led by Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy, which is one indi­ca­tion that mere­ly hav­ing a Repub­li­can in the White House mat­ters lit­tle. There is a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances in this country—did you know?—and the pres­i­dent does not sim­ply dic­tate Court appointees. (Mr. Trump may imag­ine such a fic­tion, and not just on the issue of Court appointees; but no.) The stiff-necked Sen­ate was able to back into a cor­ner even as staunch as con­ser­v­a­tive and abor­tion foe as Ronald Rea­gan.

The oth­er indi­ca­tion that the mere pres­ence of a Repub­li­can in the White House mat­ters lit­tle is that, even were Roe to be over­turned, the ques­tion of abor­tion would sim­ply default to the states, and the states are like­ly to retain what­ev­er laws they cur­rent­ly have on the books. (Dream oth­er­wise? Keep dream­ing.)

The fact is this: that, in 1992, the Court con­sist­ed of eight Repub­li­can appoint­ments, and a sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic appoint­ment hos­tile to Roe, and it still could not over­turn the sono­fabitch. That is as strong a sign as I can think of that vot­ing GOP does absolute­ly noth­ing, noth­ing, to accom­plish the defeat of Roe. Noth­ing. (Dream oth­er­wise? Keep dream­ing?)

•••

And yet the spec­tre of abor­tion is still trot­ted out in an attempt to shame and hor­ri­fy any­one who says, in 2016, that Don­ald Trump is an unac­cept­able can­di­date. Here is one exam­ple of this, from a Mr. John Ryan, who writes with a super­fluity of col­or:

Some of us have this hang up about the whole dis­mem­ber­ing. Crush­ing, pul­ver­iz­ing, decap­i­tat­ing and/or oth­er­wise killing of inno­cent human beings. Some­thing PP’s own sta­tis­ti­cian Alan Guttmach­er freely admits they do to Black human beings at five times the rate of right. Geno­cide is anoth­er of our hangups. We are also will­ing to take the word of Planned Bar­ren­hood that Trump is the mor­tal ene­my of the per­pe­tra­tors of this holo­caust. You guessed it, we have an aver­sion to holo­causts as well. My sug­ges­tion, liik up on the inter­net what an abor­tion­ist does to a human being and tell me what you would say if YOU were the one try­ing to ward off the abor­tion­ist’s sopher clamp.

Prob­lem is—this com­ment hav­ing been splashed on my Face­book wall—neither I nor any of my com­menters believe, nor once has any of us said, that we like abor­tion and think it is a won­der­ful thing, nor even that we are com­pla­cent about abor­tion. Not one of us. So this is an offen­sive and point­less tac­tic that avoids rather than engages the dis­cus­sion.

The sec­ond error is the delusion—for it is a delu­sion, a fairy tale peo­ple tell themselves—that vot­ing GOP in gen­er­al, and Trump in par­tic­u­lar, will spell doom for abor­tion. (For Trump, we are told in the above blast of pique, is the abor­tion­ist’s “mor­tal ene­my”).

Balder­dash. That has not been proven, it has only been assert­ed, in clas­sic pinky-swear fash­ion. (“Trump says so!” we are told. And of course, politi­cians nev­er, nev­er, nev­er lie. There is nev­er any expe­ri­ence of this, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a Repub­li­can. You can read my lips.) But the sto­ry we keep hear­ing is that we must oppose Hillary, because Hillary means more abor­tion, and we must vote for any­one at all run­ning against her—even some­one as admit­ted­ly odi­ous as Trump—or there will be abor­tion, and more abor­tion, and piles of babies in the streets. Pinky swear, Trump will mit­i­gate this.

The his­to­ry of Repub­li­can pres­i­dents much less odi­ous than Trump (and even Nixon was less odi­ous than Trump) does not bear this out. It is delu­sion. It is con­tin­u­ing to do the same thing over and over again, expect­ing that this time, sure­ly this time, pinky swear this time, there will be dif­fer­ent results, and abor­tion will mag­i­cal­ly dis­ap­pear from the land when the fist of Trump falls down on Roe.

•••

I exag­ger­ate, but only a lit­tle. Ask a Trump sup­port­er how he thinks the man will cur­tail abor­tion. Why, you will be told, because the next pres­i­dent will be in charge of appoint­ing jus­tices to the Supreme Court! There will be vacan­cies on the next Supreme Court! The next pres­i­dent will nom­i­nate Scali­a’s replace­ment, and in the next four years we will lose Kennedy, we will lose Gins­burg, we will lose Brey­er. We don’t want to give Hillary four Court appoint­ments!

Yes. And Repub­li­can appoint­ments to the Supreme Court, in the past, have done so much to shake Roe to its knees. Right? Every­thing depends on Don­ald J. Trump!

If it sounds like I scoff at this, it is because I scoff at this.

And so we are told that a third par­ty vote, or stay­ing home, amounts to a vote for Hillary. Which is non­sense, because the (unproven) sup­po­si­tion behind it is that such an action takes a vote away from Trump. Why? Does­n’t it also take a vote away from Hillary?

I mean, if I absolute­ly had to choose between Trump and Hillary, with a gun to my head, I’d vote for Hillary. And I would do it to mit­i­gate all this. (Take a look; it is long and scathing and fearsome—and doc­u­ment­ed. Mark Shea also cites this “bill of indict­ment” here.)

So my third-par­ty vote, under this non-log­ic log­ic, takes a vote from Hillary and ben­e­fits Trump. Trump sup­port­ers should be hap­py with me.

I am also cred­i­bly informed—ahem—that to not vote for Trump is some­how a black mark against the gen­uine­ness of my Catholi­cism.

Are you a CATHOLIC? And do you LIVE your faith? If it is yes, then how in the H*** can you pos­si­bly jus­ti­fy vot­ing for the H? Grant­ed, Trump was­n’t my first choice either, but giv­en the fact my can­di­date is not longer, TRUMP is the BEST we have as a Con­ser­v­a­tive, law abid­ing, Faith lived CATHOLIC!

Well, if Trump—who prais­es dic­ta­tors, who vows his sup­port­ers will still sup­port him if he mur­dered some­one on Fifth Avenue, who uses pic­tures of Nazis in his cam­paign posters, who vows to cur­tail free­dom of the press, who pub­licly shames his child’s moth­er, who mocks a dis­abled reporter, and on and on and on—is the last best hope for the Catholic Church in the Unit­ed States, I can only fall down in stu­pe­fac­tion and befud­dle­ment.

•••

You want to fight abor­tion in this coun­try? Great. I am for you. You want to try to get Roe v. Wade over­turned? I don’t think it’s going to be, but I like your opti­mism.

But don’t play this game with your­self where you hitch all your hopes for this goal to one polit­i­cal par­ty which sim­ply makes promis­es to you about abor­tion every four years, and which you fall for, over and over and over again. When you do that, it’s not about abor­tion any­more, it’s about partei über alles. Even a can­di­date as odi­ous as Trump is accept­able if you can con­vince your­self that it means some­thing to stop abor­tion. Think this is not so? Then ask your­self: Who could the GOP nom­i­nate that I would nev­er, nev­er, nev­er vote for? If you are will­ing to vote for some­one like Trump—read the bill of indict­ment linked above; read it—then I have to sus­pect that the answer to that ques­tion is: No one. The GOP could nom­i­nate any­one, and as long as he pinky swears to do some­thing about abor­tion, you’ll fall all over your­selves to vote for him.

But what if I told you that abor­tion could be fought and stopped no mat­ter who is in the White House? It can. For it is a moral issue much more than it is a polit­i­cal and legal one. You do more when you change hearts than when you change laws.

The oth­er part of the equa­tion here is to be more pro-life, not less (as Mark Shea is wont to say). If peo­ple have the per­cep­tion that you only care about get­ting the babies born, and then they (and their moth­ers) must fend for them­selves once the baby is born, then your jere­mi­ads against abor­tion will not change any­one’s mind.

We must address the rea­sons why a lot of women—poor women, minor­i­ty women, women who have fears based on age and health—feel backed into a cor­ner and that they must have abor­tion. We must pro­vide prac­ti­cal assis­tance, med­ical assis­tance, and coun­sel­ing, so that they have few­er rea­sons to want to abort their babies. And we must care about their lives, and their babies lives, not just their babies births.

Too often pro-life Catholics act as though the cor­rec­tive to abor­tion is sim­ply to change the laws, and mag­i­cal­ly abor­tion will end. It is not thus. If we do not change hearts, abor­tion could be ille­gal, but women will get ille­gal ones. If we do not assist women in cri­sis, abor­tion could be ille­gal, but women will get ille­gal ones.

And it is an espe­cial­ly egre­gious mis­take to hitch the pro-life cause to a polit­i­cal par­ty, for when that hap­pens, you start to think you must swal­low any can­di­date at all they nom­i­nate, you have to tell your­self that what­ev­er his oth­er odi­ous qual­i­ties, it does not mat­ter, because at least he’ll do the right thing on abor­tion.

I say this as sim­ply as I can: If you say you are pro-life, and yet vote for some­one who has all the neg­a­tives of Trump—read the bill of indict­ment—no one, whom you are try­ing to reach, will believe you. They will think that you are a pup­pet of a polit­i­cal par­ty, not some­one with seri­ous moral con­vic­tions. If you real­ly have seri­ous moral con­vic­tions, don’t act as though every oth­er moral con­sid­er­a­tion can go hang as long as the GOP can­di­date pinky swears that he will stop abor­tion.

When has vot­ing GOP ever stopped abor­tion?