By DEXTER DUGGAN
Government can be pretty activist in protecting consumers in some ways.
Grocers probably wouldn’t get away with it for long if they advertised “well-matured” foods that actually were spoiled rotten.
Or car dealers would be deflated if advertising “venerable” vehicles that were so old they were about to collapse.
People probably wouldn’t buy bad stuff if they understood the transaction.
Enter the world of euphemism — hiding the truth to make spoiled commodities sound palatable, an invitation to consume the indigestible until its toxins become insufferable.
Younger pro-lifers may not realize, but the term “pro-choice” wasn’t minted the day that the U.S. Supreme Court mandated national permissive abortion in January 1973. Pro-abortionists struggled to devise a term for what they favored without actually describing it, because their product was repellent.
The Online Etymology Dictionary says “pro-choice” was coined two years later, in 1975. It took many months of rationalizing how they would sanitize sickness. Their sales-pitch thinking acknowledged that the public wouldn’t have to love abortion, but just not interfere with those who wanted to merchandise a rotten product.
Of course, that thinking didn’t hold up in other serious situations, like, say, making the “choice” to brutally beat born children, poison stores’ medicine bottles, or possess slaves. But dominantly pro-abortion media depicted their beloved abortion as so benign, who would want to think hard about it?
When the Center for Medical Progress exposed the butcher-shop ordering lists for babies’ body parts in 2015, these media hit the ceiling. They were uncomfortable enough with scientific sonograms of preborn babies, but to acknowledge the connection between those dancing babies and the slaughterhouse sale of their limbs and organs drove them into a frenzy.
These ghastly media didn’t want the slaughter to stop, for hell’s sake. They just wanted to keep it covered up so it would continue.
That’s been pretty much the dominant media story line all along. Keep massive abortion benign and concealed while its activists never tire of shoving and shoving further for it.
The pro-abortion Clinton White House in the 1990s lied about wanting abortion to be safe, legal, but rare. By 2017, however, the official Democrat position had become that pro-life Dems shouldn’t merely tolerate abortion, but they should get out of the party if they disagreed with it.
The fact that Dem leaders were surprised by the blowback against their diktat suggested that dominant media hadn’t kept them well informed about widespread continued public resistance. It’s not as if all those annual pro-life rallies and the reasons why people kept defecting from the Democrats were supposed to mean anything worth reporting.
And, pro-abortion radicals seemed to conclude, it’s not as if the organized U.S. Catholic Church was much to fear. Look at all the nationally known Democrats like Nancy Pelosi who got away with pushing for more abortion while claiming to be practicing Catholics.
Thus, unsleeping abortion activists’ attacks expanded to include even crisis-pregnancy centers, whose mission wasn’t political but only providing caring assistance for pregnant mothers’ plaguing problems.
From California to New York, pro-abortion strong-armers caused as much trouble as they could to charitable, sacrificing pro-lifers just helping expectant moms to ease their own sufferings and give their babies birth.
California’s Democrat-dominated legal system in Sacramento commanded that pro-life centers had to promote abortion. New York Dem Gov. Andrew Cuomo said people like pro-lifers should get out of his state — until he was surprised by the adverse reaction. But Empire State officials like Attorney General Eric Schneiderman still flexed muscles to persecute pro-lifers.
Enter now Nevada Democratic Party gubernatorial hopeful Steve Sisolak, apparently hungrier for votes than he is to remain a Catholic in God’s grace. Sisolak previously described himself as a devout Catholic.
The chairman of the Clark County (Las Vegas) Commission, Sisolak tweeted on February 22 that Las Vegas’ First Choice Pregnancy Services is a “shameful group.” Sisolak’s ire was fired up by a visit to that pro-life help center by Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a candidate for governor on the Republican Party side.
Sisolak fumed that Laxalt’s visit there made plain that his “anti-choice views are beyond the pale.”
Vote for me, Sisolak pleaded to activists, and “I would protect access to women’s healthcare and a woman’s right to choose.”
A woman’s right to choose a pro-life health center, though, would be “beyond the pale,” in Sisolak’s steely gaze.
An opinion writer at Nevada’s largest daily, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, called attention to Sisolak’s tweet in a column posted February 27 and headlined, “Sisolak, Democrats attack group for helping pregnant women.”
Writer Victor Joecks commented: “Attacking crisis-pregnancy centers makes it seem as if Democrats see pregnancy as a zero-sum political game, not as a personal decision. If a woman gets an abortion, that’s one point for the left. But if she chooses life for her child, that’s one point for those right-wing religious zealots.”
In a February 28 telephone interview, Joecks told The Wanderer that Sisolak had a more moderate image, but he’s fighting to attract Democrat votes in the June 12 Nevada primary, where “he’s got to run to the left” to win “party faithful” who turn out for that sort of election.
But that presents a problem, Joecks said. “I think, for him, he runs the risk of alienating a lot of people who would be attracted to him” because of a moderate reputation.
Joecks said he received a phone call from a man who’d been thinking of voting for Sisolak, but decided he wouldn’t.
In his opinion column, Joecks explained: “Despite his fundraising advantages, Sisolak faces a credible primary challenge from fellow Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. Unlike Sisolak, Giunchigliani has been an outspoken and hard-core lefty for decades. Nevada’s Democratic primary voters are historically from the left wing of the party. . . .
“Those realities explain, but don’t excuse, why Sisolak has resorted to such attacks,” Joecks added.
With this kind of climate, Joecks told The Wanderer, “There are times when you’ve got to go on the offense” for pro-life.
Neither Sisolak nor his campaign responded to Joecks’ request for a comment for his column, so The Wanderer gave it a try, submitting the question through Sisolak’s campaign website and asking about the conflict between his strong abortion advocacy and claims to be a devout Catholic.
Both the website and an auto-email sent to this writer’s inbox enthused, “Thank you for contacting the campaign,” promising a response “right away.” But no one had responded as the end-of-day deadline passed on February 28.
It’s not unusual for politicians to run toward their base in primaries, then back away in order to appeal more widely for the general election in November.
However, what if the base consisted of vegetarians who demanded that meat-eaters be executed? Or interventionists who thought that clusters of nuclear bombs should be lobbed at jaywalking Canadians? Does demanding mass slaughter of infants mean the base demands too much?
A Review-Journal story in 2010 said: “Sisolak also is a devout Catholic who goes to Mass every day. He said his faith keeps him grounded.” Joecks told The Wanderer that a 2017 article also made the claim of the Democrat being a devout Catholic.
But, pointing to Pope Francis’ statements against abortion, Joecks wrote in his February 27 column, “If Sisolak thinks a crisis-pregnancy center is ‘shameful,’ how would he and other Nevada Democrats describe Pope Francis?”
Suggestion For
The New Bishop
Coincidentally, the Review-Journal posted a news story on February 28 that Diocese of Helena, Mont., Bishop George Leo Thomas will be installed as the third bishop of Las Vegas on May 15, to succeed retiring Bishop Joseph Pepe.
The Helena diocesan website said, “There are nearly 750,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Las Vegas, a Catholic population nearly 15 times the size of the Diocese of Helena.”
That’s a lot of Nevada Catholics to greet. But Thomas would be wise to set an example soon by sitting down with prominent politician Sisolak to educate him about what is required of “a devout Catholic.” Including not pushing for permissive abortion and not sliming pro-life pregnancy centers as “shameful” places.
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