Regarding Melania– the book jacket is as stark and cold as the insides
This election presents troubling but still crucial differences for the pro-life cause (they are as black and white as Melania’s book cover). The way Donald Trump has treated the issue of late means right to life voters need to relate more to voting for political party dominance than being wound up in presidential proclivities. That is as it should be.
But the 2024 presidential choices are crucial and essentially binary as a chasm remains on important matters between Trump and Harris along with the Republican Party and Democrats. The differences in both binaries remain compelling for pro-lifers.
That said, it is still important to make admissions about Trump to maintain the integrity of the cause. And that means being critical of him and now his wife who has perhaps made the most egregious anti-right-to-life statement regarding abortion of any First Lady or prospective First Lady in my decades of observation. Even Hillary Clinton arguably fudged the issue better.
The independent worth of human beings in utero, a stage of human life we all went through, does not figure into Melania Trump’s view of the matter of the right to life of the unborn — only the autonomy of the woman and never mind that half the babies killed are female. Relying on book excerpts regarding her absolutist philosophy as regards the inherent “right” of a woman to end her pregnancy at any stage, the life of the unborn child she carries is not controlling or modifying. She does not specify any appropriate legal distinction.
So the record is safe with Melania, we have never had a Republican pro-life First Lady. Indeed she has set herself as being as bad in principle as any Democrat First Lady. And to think I once thought maybe she was keeping Donald in line on the matter. What a fool I can be in desperation to avoid the utter evil of Democrats. At least Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush stifled themselves as a matter of political timing and I do not recall that any of them made such a staggering (as reported about Melania) absolute statement about ones responsibility to the life a woman carries. It is now apparent that my allowing for the few accoutrements of Catholicism Melania displayed early on in Trump’s term as perhaps indicative of something positive was as ridiculous as others allowing it for Joe Biden.
According to reports (we have not seen her book) the formally sphinx-like Melania has gone all chatty-cathy and can’t be stark enough in her position alleging her and every woman’s absolute autonomy as regards abortion. God’s will is irrelevant, human will is everything. Never mind the symbiosis of mother and child or the importance to every successful human culture of the elevation of the bond of protection by mothers to their offspring. When that is lost, all is lost.
Quite the Catholic/ Christian theorist Melania turns out to be. For her the unborn are a disposable entity and that belly-button (and a lot more) she was so proud to display at the drop of however many dollars is meaningless to her, or she does not have the depth to contemplate it. No Biblical or cultural or democratically established legal framework should allow protection of the unborn human being’s autonomy if their presence in any way conflicts with her chosen or revised autonomy. Apparently they are to be considered invaders, non-innocent, disposable. Or you can consider them children but you still get to dispose off them if they reside in utero. Autonomy is absolute. At least illegal immigrants are to be provided orderly, timely, presumably still life-affirming deportation (in the case of the unborn referred to as birth).
Melania Trump’s two demential orientation explains a lot about her demeanor. But we are not voting for her.
The moral and philosophical depth of the former President (and given the alternative, we hope future) and his spouse on the matter of abortion ranges from seat of the pants, to manipulation, to capitulation, to do the right thing (although DJT didn’t really personally pick the SCOTUS nominees), to fear and loathing, to abortion sympathy, to protecting some babies and the ability to protect more, to advocacy for one seriously warped philosophical view now put in print by Melania.
One more thought as regards the latter, if bodily autonomy as regards parenthood is Melania’s conceptual framework then her book should contain a paragraph or two on why men should not have to pay child support if they do not want to. Certainly the fruits of their current and future labors are confiscated by law for 18 years at a minimum. What is the scalar or even conceptual difference, other than men do not get to legally kill their kids as a matter of autonomy? Well they used to, it was called paterfamilias, we just are now substituting materfamilias abandoning the Christian teaching of the unique worth (and protect-ability) of every human being, –autonomy for all not just the dominant.
Oh well, DJT is our guy, and he really must be because the choice is essentially binary and he has good (we assume solid) positions on other important matters without getting into a discussion of the scale with regard to the right to life but definitively as regards the ability of the republic to survive. And the Democrats are just utterly dependably evil — far beyond Trump’s apostasies, inconsistencies, insincerities, stupidity, superficialities, volatility and incoherencies. But let’s not be naive. Those are arguably Trump’s good features in the scheme of things as they at least intermittently, arguably predominantly, work in support of culture and the ability to redress grievances. Democrats are methodically anti-culture, essentially Marxist.
I fear (but have hope to the contrary) that what we are seeing on the issue from Trump may be more substantive than political winks and nods, game playing, get through the election maneuverings on what they consider a handicapping position on the right to life. Trump has so aggravated the issue by being so inarticulate or worse I can believe he was never with us, he just picked some pro-life people to ride with him. All credit to them, not so much Trump. Regrettably the coincidence of pro-life people in his administration in the past can now be seen as expendable for the greater cause of Donald Trump. He hires on whims and fires as needed, it is his way. So the big question becomes who is going to have his ear?
We should push back on Trump’s unnecessary personal and political stupidity and abandonment of those that helped bring him. Pro-lifers voted for him in the various primaries because he talked the talk and surrounded himself with genuine pro-life personages. He read the room. Trump would have placed much more distant in Iowa and subsequent early states in 2016 had he advocated for no federal laws to protect the unborn and excoriated state laws as he has done.
Certainly Trump was not unique on the immigration issue and border security or America first. In a very crowded field in 2016 the showman’s bombast seemed refreshing and “real” (not all proved real) and attracted media and a very fed up majority of TEA Party folks that came to dominate the Party. Something that predated Trump.
The media buoyed him early on for their own insincere purposes presuming he would be easily destroyed by Hillary. They did not underestimate Trump, as he was often his own worst enemy, they underestimated the strength of TEA party like sentiments outside the Republican Party after the nomination and the disdain for Hillary by men and women.
Trump decided he needed to be “pro-life” and up to 2020 as far as people knew he kept his word on justices (Roe had not been overturned by 2020) and demonstrably on executive policy. However Barrett and Kavanaugh are not prizes of the caliber of Thomas or Alito who the Bush presidencies brought. On that basis alone Trump is arguably not the most pro-life president as both have been problematic on other key constitutional matters including government influence over the internet, corrupting the availability to promulgate our message.
Certainly Ronald Reagan was far more articulate and insightful. And previous Republican presidents had a less socially conservative Republican Party to deal with. But again so as to be abundantly clear a Republican as president now, for a variety of reasons, will be vastly superior to a Democrat for the right to life /pro-life cause.
Trump’s most recent repeated “promise” essentially to veto any federal effort to protect unborn human life if it portends to disallow elective abortions (he has managed to forget or make his 20 weeks concept murky in spite of the platform) is really a conceptual piece of work from this “most pro-life president ever”. He couldn’t formulate a more artful political statement than that? Maybe it is just a gratuitous statement to an unlikely possibility (in no small part thanks to him). But so much of what he says on the issue is ignorant, oblivious, insulting to his allies and wrong (but not always). Trump made his veto statement in spite of “his’ gobbled-gook platform plank which declares that the 14th Amendment (an imposition on the states) guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process in the United States.
Trump remains fearful and shallow on the issue and constitutionally ignorant. He wanted to keep the issue totally out of the 2024 platform having previously run with, even if not exactly ON a pro-life platform (not merely a states rights platform), winning in 2016 and arguably in 2020. He could have uncomplicated social-conservative and pro-life support by allowing more input and positive pro-life / pro-family planks and maintain whatever demurral he felt necessary. His shallowness and even obtusness is evidenced by HIS 2024 platform (previous platforms were genuinely democratic) where he invokes the 14th amendment to sustain a state’s rights view. It is incredibly goofy.
Accordingly pro-lifers shouldn’t act like the Amen Corner as regards Trump. We need to have the Party and the Congress. Trump’s supposed position on federal money for abortion (he says he still opposes it oblivious to what he proposes as regards IVF) really does not matter as much if Congress does not appropriate it anyway. Nor does his position championing IVF if Congress does not pay for it although too many Republicans appear to be on board.
In that regard we must not be silent that as IVF is practiced it is essentially a process of create-inspect-and selectively destroy new human life as if we are demi-gods and prospective parents are entitled to use whatever means they want to obtain parenthood and the supposedly perfect child while abandoning or destroy the others.
The history of this human epoch is being written in terms of biology and the cultural transmission of biomedical ethics. Pro-life may be just on hold with Trump, but with him we can pray we are on a slower track to inculcation of abortion and the diminution of life in utero or however conceived. Trump’s latest personal position in essence advocating for the legality of most abortions at the federal level and gratuitously personally opposing efforts to limit most of them at the state level through his statements that this or that limit is “too far” give cause for worry about him. It gives cause to oppose his protégé Vance in 2028 for being such a dishrag however ambitious. He has done his record, the cause and his faith wrong with his statements and formulations. He is less discombobulated as a speaker than Trump.
But, and I cannot emphasize it enough, we know where the Democrats are coming from and they must be opposed. The Democrats are the Party of Abortion. It is their third rail and imbues everything they do, domestically and in foreign policy. Trump is not that.
In summation as regards pro-lifers criticizing the Trumps — Donald and Melania deserve it on the matter of the autonomous right to life for all human beings not just women. The right exists for all and from the very beginning, at the spark of each unique new human life. How politically practical it is to obtain it in the short term is a proper question but the abandonment and criticism of the idea and its adherents is weak and unnecessary.
Trump is fearful of pro-abortion sentiment (misreading saliency and accuracy of polls — the bias of the questions and the respondents chosen). He should be fearful of pro-life sentiment aggravated by his boneheaded statements. But it is what it is and Trump is who he is. It is fine for now to use him to get the superior results we need. That is the extent of my support because there are other American Presidents and citizens to admire more for courage and articulation and devotion to important values. His resiliency was remarkable two months ago after Butler but not sanctifying and pro-lifers should not assume him protected by God in all he says and does.
As of today Trump in essence says he opposes any serious curtailment of legal abortion even at the state level, the latter at least personally. And the sad thing is Trump and his pathetic apparat expect us to uncritically support him no matter what he says or however many times he says one thing and then something contradictory, or insults us.
My four main points are intended to be — Integrity demands we should be critical of Trump (while we absolutely need to be critical of Democrats’ utter evil, that they ought to be anathema). Secondly we should not give all the oxygen to Trump and put all our eggs in his basket but take the initiative for the independence and critical importance of a conservative Republican Party and Congress. Thirdly, do not absolutely trust Trump one statement to the next — press and verify. And fourthly, yes vote for him and encourage others to do so as the alternative is incompatible with the survival of the republic (a matter of Democrats being so bad, not Trump being so good).
Further, Trump is not a Biblical character protected by the hand of God anymore than other presidential aspirants, in the last hundred and sixty years anyway. And by the way, vote in person even if a (very) few days early at a satellite location as security and integrity is far superior in that mode than the fraud enabling atrocity of vote by mail — referencing another Trumpian mixed-message flip-flop against interests.
Related links (to be supplemented
https://downloads.frcaction.org/EF/EF18H05.pdf
