OPINION:
“Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden”? Really? Latin has a word for that: “non sequitur.”
It’s also oxymoronic, but Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden was launched Oct. 2 to considerable media fanfare, disproportionate to its small number of signatories supporting the Democratic presidential ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over President Trump.
The 18 primary signatories — none of them national household names — stress that they’re endorsing Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris even though they disagree with their extreme pro-abortion positions.
How can any self-respecting pro-life evangelical be for a ticket that not only supports abortion with virtually no limitations and wants to eradicate all state restrictions as well, but also wants Congress to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which since 1980 has prohibited federal taxpayer funds from paying for it?
Until recently a supporter of the Hyde Amendment, Mr. Biden has reversed course to mollify the hard-left base of his party.
In their 110-page platform, the Biden-Harris ticket vows to “restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood,” adding: “Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to women’s reproductive rights, including repealing the Hyde Amendment, and will work to protect and codify Roe v. Wade.”
These purported pro-lifers’ endorsement of Biden-Harris comes despite all that and despite Mr. Trump’s consistent, strongly pro-life record over the past 45 months, as compiled by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List.
In addition to appointing scores of pro-life judges and justices to the federal courts, it says, Mr. Trump:
• Permitted states to defund Planned Parenthood of Title X and Medicaid funds.
• Stopped tax dollars funding abortion overseas.
• Defunded the pro-abortion U.N. Population Fund.
• Made strong pro-life appointments to key positions in the administration.
• Created a new office for conscience protection at the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Clarified that abortion is not a civil right and signed an executive order protecting infants born alive.
Despite the fact that all of that — and more — would be swept aside if Mr. Biden wins and Democrats retake the Senate, these pro-life evangelicals insist that Mr. Biden’s policies are somehow more consistent with a “biblically shaped ethic of life” than Mr. Trump’s, claiming, “Poverty, lack of accessible health care services, smoking, racism and climate change are all pro-life issues.”
According to a Zogby poll released Oct. 3 — one day after Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden’s coming-out party — found the president leading Mr. Biden among evangelicals by a margin of 68% to 32%.
A Washington Post-ABC poll, taken in late September, found an even higher margin among White evangelical Protestant likely voters, 75% to 25%.
That Trump advantage suggests that most evangelicals are unlikely to be fooled by what, for all practical purposes, is little more than a “letterhead organization.”
Letterhead organizations leverage their influence through the issuing of public statements using the names of a few notable people — as on a letterhead — for its gravitas and authority.
Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden has neither.
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