By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
There is no question that Chris Matthews was acting as a partisan and a cheap-shot artist during his MSNBC interview with Donald Trump a few weeks ago. He was looking for a “gotcha” moment to serve the Democratic Party candidate in the upcoming presidential election. He got what he wanted: It was prudent for Trump to walk back his initial comment about punishing women who procure abortions. Hillary and Bernie Sanders were jumping all over it. In fact, they are still are.
Just to refresh your memory about the exchange. Matthews, with fiery eyes and clenched jaw, pressed Trump repeatedly about whether women who have abortions would be punished if Trump gets his way and abortion is made illegal. Trump fidgeted and sought to deflect the question, but Matthews would not let go, the way debaters behave when they know they have their opponent on the ropes.
When Matthews put him in the corner on whether he thinks women who violate laws against abortion should face legal consequences, Trump responded, “There has to be some form of punishment, yeah.” The media were aghast.
Which resulted in the walk-back the next day. Here it is: “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman….The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”
The walk-back was the right thing to do. It expressed the position of American pro-life groups. LifeSiteNews has provided evidence to support that there were only two cases in which a woman was charged with participating in her own abortion before Roe v. Wade, one in Pennsylvania in 1911, and the other in Texas in 1922.
Pro-life groups in the United States do not call for women who have had abortions to be jailed. Period. Democrats have manufactured this issue to score points against pro-life groups. Trump’s correction of his previous day’s comment was both prudent and on the mark.
But only up to a point. I offer for your consideration what Matthews would have said if Trump’s first answer was to maintain that women should not face legal consequences for their abortions. If Trump had said that, Matthews would not have moved on to a different topic. He would have jumped at the chance to ask a follow-up question. He would have asked, “Why not? We punish women who hire assassins. If you think abortion is the killing of an unborn child, why should the women who hires the abortionist walk away scot-free? You are not making sense.”
I submit that pro-life groups will have deal with this question. Matthews has asked it before of pro-life politicians. If it is left unanswered, the impression is given that people opposed to abortion do not really believe that the procedure results in the killing of an unborn child. Liberal Democrats will be left free to charge that pro-lifers understand — even if they won’t admit it — that the unborn are not yet human beings entitled to protection under the law.
Arthur L. Caplan, the director of Medical Ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center, dealt with Trump’s walk-back in a column in Forbes shortly after Trump’s interview with Matthews. He doesn’t buy the correction. He wrote: “Those who make elective abortions available do not lure women into choosing abortion. There is no such advertising or messaging….The reality of abortion is that women are frequently not victims. The instances in which ‘victimhood’ actually exists include force, fraud, coercion, duplicity, and mental incompetence.”
But Caplan maintains these cases amount to a small number of the abortions performed. Far more frequent, he insists, are cases “when women find themselves pregnant” and “usually try to initiate a discussion with the man who they believe is responsible.” That discussion frequently fails when it is discovered that the man “does not want” the baby.
“Further conversation then often ensues with friends and family and sometimes others. Then a decision, a morally accountable decision, is made.”
When a woman decides upon an elective abortion outside the circumstances of “force, fraud, coercion, duplicity, and mental incompetence,” she is “making a voluntary choice.”
I think most pro-life Americans understand that Caplan’s point is valid, even if they refrain from saying so publicly because of the problems it will present in the political arena. There are too many scenarios where it is difficult to depict the woman as a victim. We know that. The truth matters.
What about a woman who has had several abortions as a form of birth control? What about women who use abortion to select the sex of their children? I once heard a discussion in the faculty room of a school where I taught in which a colleague spoke openly, without a trace of discomfort, of how he would advise a woman he knew, whose pregnancy would interfere with her plans for a lengthy motorhome trip, to have an abortion. What if that woman took his advice? Would she be a victim?
Does this mean pro-life groups are obliged to give pro-abortion advocates the talking point they are looking for, by publicly announcing that their agenda includes giving jail sentences to women who undergo an abortion? It does not. Sentences vary in our system for the taking of a human life, even for a woman who hires a paid assassin: everything from innocent because of duress, suspended sentences, mandatory counseling, house arrest, to justifiable homicide, to manslaughter, to premeditated, first-degree murder.
The same calculus can be used for women who hire abortionists, if abortion is once again made illegal.
The bottom line: Pro-life advocates, when pressed on this point by someone like Chris Matthews, need not concede that their call for making abortion illegal requires them to also call for locking up women who undergo abortions and throwing away the key. They can respond by saying, “We think that mandatory counseling and a suspended sentence would make sense in most cases. The abortionist is the one who should be punished.” And leave it there, even if pressed to elaborate, by giving the stock response politicians use about “not dealing with hypotheticals.”
They could also turn the tables on the questioner. Matthews says he is “personally opposed as a Catholic to abortion, but does not want to impose his views on others in a pluralistic society.” They could ask him why he is “personally opposed.” The only logical answer to that question is that he believes it is the taking of an unborn life. If that is not his reason, why is he personally opposed?
Matthews could then be asked if that logic applies to his beliefs about child abuse, child marriages, involuntary female circumcision, wife-beating, and child pornography. And if not, why not? Why is he willing to impose his personal beliefs upon those who disagree with him in these matters? That is not a trick question. It is central to this debate.
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