By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
The term “the big lie technique” is most often associated with Adolf Hitler and his henchman Josef Goebbels. The theory is that a preposterous lie will eventually be accepted by the masses if it is repeated confidently and emphatically.
In Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf, “Because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Goebbels expressed the idea more concisely: “When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.”
Hitler and Goebbels are not the only ones who have used this tactic. The big lie has been employed by liberal Democrats since the early 1970s, when abortion was first made legal in this country. Remember how we were told for decades that they never had any intention of forcing taxpayers to pay for anyone else’s abortion? They insisted that no one would be forced to violate their conscience on abortion in that manner; that all they wanted was to guarantee a woman’s right to “control her own body.”
We were told it was right-wing scare tactics to contend that the day would come when those who believed that an abortion was the taking of an innocent life would have to pay for the procedure with their tax dollars.
That was why there was widespread support from liberal Democrats in 1976 for the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of Medicaid funds to provide abortions for poor women, except to save the life of the pregnant woman or in cases of rape or incest.
It was their way of dividing the forces working to end legal abortions by making the procedure seem less violative of their freedom of religion. You no doubt remember hearing the lines: “No one is forcing you to have an abortion if you are opposed to it.” “What business is it of yours how women in this country define their reproductive freedom? It doesn’t involve you or your religious beliefs.” “All we want is for abortion to be safe, legal — and rare.”
Many in the pro-life movement were sure at the time that this was a ruse; they were suspicious that pro-abortion groups were actually looking to get the camel’s nose under the tent, waiting for the politically opportune moment when they could move from pushing for “legal, but rare” abortions to their ultimate goal, taxpayer supported abortion on demand, up to and including late-term abortion.
Hillary Clinton thinks that moment is now. She is spilling the beans about the hidden agenda of the abortion lobby. Speaking at a Planned Parenthood rally in Hooksett, N.H., on January 10, she said, “Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all. Not when patients and providers have to endure harassment and intimidation just to walk into a health center….Not when providers are required by state law to recite misleading information to women to shame and scare them. And not as long as we have laws on the book like the Hyde Amendment making it harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.”
It is considered out of bounds to act as if you can read someone’s mind and impute motives to them. I buy that. But this case is an exception. I remain confident that Hillary Clinton has thought this way about abortion since the 1970s; that she always wanted the government to pay for “free” abortions for those lacking sufficient funds to pay for them without difficulty.
I’ll go further: I am convinced that Hillary in private agrees with Barack Obama, when he conceded before he came president that his ultimate goal was a single-payer health-care system, once the country could be sold on its advantages. The two of them have always intended for abortion-on-demand to be one of the health-care services provided to every woman in the country, rich or poor — in that single-payer system.
Unfair of me to make that charge? Consider the praise that came Hillary’s way once she proposed repealing the Hyde Amendment. It reveals the goals of the pro-abortion forces in the country.
We can start with the left-wing website Slate. It praised Hillary’s “call-out of the amendment.” Slate pointed to her new forthrightness on taxpayer-funded abortion as an example of the “strides made by the reproductive justice movement, which has for years worked to expand a limited pro-choice abortion-centered framework to include marginalized communities.”
Kierra Johnson, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), joined the praise for Hillary. She told Slate in an email, “We are thrilled that pro-choice champions are no longer accepting the Hyde Amendment as the status quo” and are pushing to end interference by the government “with anyone’s personal decision” about abortion “because of how much they earn.” URGE is backing the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act, writes Johnson, because it “would include abortion coverage in federal health insurance plans, including Medicaid, and remove barriers to public funding in other plans.”
Another example is Christina Cauterucci, who writes a blog for Slate called “What Women Really Think.” Her hope is that Hillary will become more aggressive in her effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment, calling it “a long-overdue step toward addressing the intersection between economic insecurity and reproductive health. Studies show that poor women take up to three weeks longer than other women to secure an abortion, in part because they need time to come up with the money.”
There is a great deal of wisdom behind the old cliché, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” It is not “paranoid” to suspect that the secular left has hidden agendas. We saw how they pushed through the homosexual agenda, moving from the time when they assured us that all they wanted was an end to discrimination in employment and housing, to their current demand for same-sex marriage and same-sex locker rooms for transgender teens.
Now we have the example of Hillary Clinton pulling back the curtain on what “pro-choice” groups have wanted all along regarding taxpayer-supported abortion, all their former protestations to the contrary.
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