OPINION:
In his first month in office, Donald Trump delivered on his promise to be an anti-abortion president and help stop our national shame. He reinstated the “Mexico City Policy,” which bans federal funding to international groups that provide abortions.
Secondly, he appointed two people opposed to abortion, Charmaine Yoest and Teresa Manning, to positions at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Now he’s rounding third with his executive order on religious freedom, which will provide regulatory relief for religious objectors to Obamacare’s burdensome preventive services mandate, a position supported by the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby.
If he is able in September to defund Planned Parenthood, that will make it a home run. Mr. Trump will go down as a great anti-abortion president.
The country needs that, given that Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has announced that being pro-abortion is now “not negotiable” for Democrats. If abortion weren’t such a serious matter, the Democrats’ position would be almost comical.
Bryce Covert, the economic policy editor at ThinkProgress and a contributor to The Nation, wrote 900 words on the topic for The New York Times. He picked on Bernie Sanders for supporting a candidate for mayor of Omaha who is not pro-abortion.
Mr. Covert describes how abortions can be economically beneficial to women, especially working women. He writes: “The glaring mistake [Democrats] all make, however, is thinking that there is any way to disentangle reproductive rights from economic issues.”
For serious people, the debate over abortion is not about economic issues. It’s over whether what actually happens during an abortion is good or bad.
Suppose we substitute killing a grandmother for abortion in Mr. Covert’s article. Some of his sentences would read as follows:
Economics reverberates throughout women’s lives when they can’t terminate their grandmothers. In a study of women who sought to terminate their grandmothers, those who were unsuccessful were three times as likely to fall into poverty over the following two years as those women who were able to terminate, despite beginning in comparable financial situations. They were also more likely to wind up unemployed.
A woman in a precarious financial situation who knows she can’t afford a grandmother can easily fall farther behind if she has to care for a grandmother, something that costs the average person thousands of dollars a year. In a country that offers little to no paid leave, grandmother-care assistance, or other supports, a grandmother who needs care can make it impossibly difficult to hold down a job or get a higher degree.
There you have the case for terminating grandma. Airtight.
If it weren’t so tragic, it might be comical. It reminds one a bit of movies that have cross dialogue: two characters think they’re talking about the same thing but aren’t, as in this scene from “Moulin Rouge.”
(Christian is trying to read his poetry to Satine, but she thinks he’s talking about something else.)
Satine: A little supper? Maybe some champagne?
Christian: I’d rather just, um … get it over and done with.
Satine: Oh! Very well. Then why don’t you … (lies on the bed) come down here. Let’s get it over and done with.
Christian: I prefer to do it standing.
Satine: Oh!
Christian: You don’t have to stand, I mean … it’s sometimes … it’s quite long. And I’d like you to be comfortable. It’s quite modern what I do and it may feel a little strange at first, but, but I think if you’re open, then … then you might enjoy it.
Satine: I’m sure I will.
But I’m not sure grandma will.
Although a majority of millennials now support increasing restrictions on abortion, it is nevertheless still supported by a majority of people in this country. That should not surprise given the way mainstream media discuss abortion: as no more significant than, say, buying a car.
The real issue, of course, is this: Is what the procedure terminates a person? Every day, modern science takes us to a fuller understanding that the small living thing, from Day One, is in fact a person. But also, every day, modern liberal progressive politics takes us in the opposite direction: that there’s nothing wrong, really, with terminating those who undoubtedly are persons but who are, you know, helpless and useless, like, well, you know, grandmothers, and grandfathers, too.
With the election of Donald Trump, Planned Parenthood (which runs the nation’s pre-eminent abortion mills) is on the run — reason enough to have voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton. And a Supreme Court refurbished by President Trump, now a real possibility, could, literally, save lives.
But in the meantime, the national shame continues, which should scare the living daylights out of old people we used to honor and protect.
Goodbye, Grandma.
• Daniel Oliver is chairman of the board of the Education and Research Institute and a director of Citizens for the Republic.
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