The first? I’ve lost count. His entire campaign has been his staff saying “What he really mean was…” For instance his total lack of knowledge of the Constitution and the 14th amendment. He came out saying that as president he would repeal the law that allowed “anchor babies.” Then someone pointed out that it wasn’t a statute it was in the constitution. Then all of a sudden his stance was that many great constitutional scholars agreed with him that it’s not covered in the 14th. It was obvious that he had no idea when what the constitution said when first opened his mouth on the subject.
The situation you describe should be prevented by serious sex education, easy access to birth control (free, if necessary) & access to safe, early term abortion
Closing down Planned Parenthood all over the country will just lead to more botched self-abortions.
If abortion is murder, as so many of the “pro-lifers” preach, why* not* make women suffer for their sins?
If safe, confidential abortions were easily accessible across the economic spectrum then maybe I’d agree. But it a world where we (some of us) shame and harangue women into not seeking out abortions, and make it difficult to get them when they choose to, I’m not sure punishing the women for taking matters into their own hands makes any sense.
“We’re going to make it as hard as possible for you to get a safe abortion from your doctor/clinic. Then we’re going to arrest you when you try to induce your own.”
Not a very pro-choice position.
For as many times I’ve had to listen to the “Abortion is murdering babies!” schtick, going after doctors but not going after the women involved makes as much sense as arresting a hit man but calling the person who hired him a “victim”. If you believe that abortion is murdering babies show some conviction and be honest about it instead of hiding for the sake of political expediency. Same thing as the “rape and incest” exemption really: “Abortion is baby-murder, unless they’re rape babies then they don’t really count”.
It’s a gaffe because almost all professional pro-lifers either don’t want or won’t admit to wanting to punish women who have illegal abortions. And the reason is that this is a solid loser. Even if sophisticated pro-lifers really did want to punish women who got abortions, they know that the only laws restricting abortion that would be politically palatable to a majority of Americans would be ones that don’t impose criminal penalties on women who have abortions.
Yes, if you really think abortion is murder then it would be logically consistent to charge women who have abortions with murder. But that won’t work, because the citizens at large won’t support it. If you got into power and tried to enact such a law you’d be voted out of office, if you claim to support such a law when running for office people will vote against you, and make people less sympathetic to the pro-life movement in general.
To put it in terms you might understand, even if Ed Begley secretly wanted to make owning an internal combustion vehicle illegal, he’s not going to advocate for that because he knows nobody would listen to him. It doesn’t make sense to advocate for laws that people won’t stand for, even if it is your ideal outcome.
Finding examples where The Donald has double-talked himself into a factual and logical corner is, yes, quite easy. This one is interesting as he didn’t stick to his guns and issued that rarest of things from Donald Trump: a mea culpa.
IMHO, of course.
Except in this case, Donald actually followed the logic through on the abortion question to its logical end. It’s the Republican party and the Pro-Life movement which has double-talked itself into a corner. If they really believe abortion is murder, why do they not want the murderers and the conspirators/morthers who hire hitmen (murderers) to be charged with a crime?
Aside from the politically suicidal implications of going after the women, supporting their prosecution interferes with the narrative that they are being deceived and pressured into having abortions by Planned Parenthood et al and are thus victims.
I should have excluded Abortions due to rape, incest or to save the mother’s life in my OP. Those were legal many places, for pretty obvious reasons.
I’m not sure how many states allowed abortion for other reasons. There might have been a few. I haven’t researched it because all those state laws were voided by Roe v Wade.
Trump walked into this buzz saw. He should have said, “it’s up to each state” which is what will happen if Roe v Wade is over turned. The President will have little if any input in that extended debate within each state.
Gang Members are often pressured into gangs, yet they are still charged with murder despite whatever pressure they received to get into one in the first place. There are female gang members as well.
Because contraception is murder too, remember? Besides, we have to punish the dirty dirty sluts for having sinful dirty sex.
Alaska, Hawaii, New York, Washington State, and Wash DC.
And while we’re talking the illogicality, why is abortion okay for rape and incest? The child of a rapist bears the sins of the father?
What’s obvious about it? If a person really believes a fetus has a right to live then how can that same person argue that a fetus conceived by rape or incest doesn’t have that right? Either all fetuses have rights or none do.
I realize many of you lefties around here won’t believe me, but I think this needs to be said anyway, because it’s the truth: I’m a former mainstream conservative and used to attend an evangelical church, am now more of an alt-righter but still have a lot of friends and family who are mainstream cons and evangelicals, and I can tell you that these people really do believe it. They put women on a pedestal and are extremely chivalrous. They really believe that anytime a woman is tempted to do something bad, it’s only because a bad man is somehow tricking or forcing her into it.
I’m pretty sure it was performing an abortion that used to be illegal, not having one.
What I find even more baffling is why Donald was asked if there should be any punishment for the man who got the woman pregnant. :dubious: Other than rape cases why would even be suggested? He doesn’t have any control over whether the woman gets an abortion. Granted it does fit with the idea that women are incapable making their own decisions and need to be protected from themselves; like the ludicrous notion that any woman who get’s an abortion is a victim. :rolleyes:
Politics; it makes it easier to get anti-abortion laws passed if how nasty they are is papered over. First they say that they’ll exempt rape and incest to make the laws sound less brutal, then once the laws are in place they remove those limitations or ignore them.
Just like the laws *supposedly *passed to make the penalty worse for people who attack or kill pregnant women & hurt the fetus, are now being used to persecute and imprison pregnant women. All over the world.
Isn’t this because normally he says something stupid but popular with the part of the populace he’s courting. Here, he said something stupid but unpopular with the part of the populace he is courting.
On this particular point, even a candidate that said “leave it to each state” WRT choice would be pressed on what he thinks would be the right thing to do about the woman, so the question should have been expected. Donald has a great difficulty saying “I don’t have an answer for that” – most of the time he weasels out with “I’m going to have a tremendous policy, you’ll see it’s gonna be so good” without saying what would be the policy. Here he was directly asked would you advocate this specific thing, and I agree that he seems to have answered on the fly what he *thought *the rabid base wanted to hear, knowing that they won’t mind if he later “clarifies” – and he’s right about this last part, the rabid base will just say “oh, come on! you KNEW what he meant! you’re just as lame PC as ever!” while each believing he meant what *they *feel.
You answered your own question. He was being probed on whether he followed the punitive vision of “pro life” to all its possible (if unlikely) logical ends or whether, like everyone else, he’d draw lines at some point.