As Trump and Harris demonstrated, life Is debatable

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris engaged in a presidential debate last Tuesday, and the result was as any American with one eye open might have predicted. Trump was mostly dour and angry, reactive and aggressive. Harris was scripted and polished, perky and biting. The ABC moderators gave her predictable questions and continually interrupted him with fact-checking. Harris had the better showing because Trump could not help taking the bait prepared for him over and over again, defending his record and his rallies blusterously.

Kamala Harris seemed like the Democrats’ new glossy puppet. Donald Trump seemed like the Republicans’ old grizzled incumbent as he characterized Harris’s plan as simple and stupid as “Run, Spot, run.”

But the most volatile and tense moment of the debate was when abortion was introduced as a topic—a topic second only to the economy in the concerns of voters. Trump faced the question whether the pro-life movement could trust him after his waffling over the Florida bill, which would restrict abortions after a baby is six weeks old. Obfuscating, he pointed to the story of how a former governor of Virginia once used language that suggested killing a baby after it was born was an option and said that the Florida vote was to avoid such “executions,” as he called it. He said he had had the courage as president to take down Roe v. Wade and send the abortion question back to the states where everyone wanted it, and that was that.

Harris rejoined with a response that, sad to say, might win her the White House. She asserted that no one wanted women bleeding out in hospital parking lots, or to carry pregnancies to term that were the result of rape, or to make doctors afraid of going to jail. She warned like a doomsday prophet of a national abortion ban without exceptions if Trump won the election and even a federal abortion monitor to watch over the states.

She insisted with an incredible conviction for a woman with strong ties to the Baptist tradition that abortion is compatible with faith systems: “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” She cried out for this “freedom” for women to make decisions about their bodies, and that the government must have nothing to do with those decisions. She said that to restrict abortion was “immoral” and that abortion—the destruction of an innocent life—is a matter of freedom and something that the American people want and should, therefore, have.

Has there ever been an election where the unholy sacrament of abortion has loomed so large, like the blood-soaked shadow of Moloch himself?

Whether Trump or Harris gains the Catholic vote, there is no true pro-life candidate before Catholic voters. Trump has washed his hands of the blood of babies by allowing the states to vote for themselves—as Ohio and Kansas have to terrible, liberal result—as he admitted on the debate stage. Harris, on the other hand, is making abortion, or “reproductive rights,” a central to her platform, to restore it to its status of being a national right and allow Americans to choose to kill their children for the sake of self-serving convenience in one form or another. And she made that position loud and clear in the debate, to the point many felt that her words on the matter won them over.

But, in the case of either nominee, the horror of making life and death a matter of private choice, of legalized murder, is on full display. If this debate showed anything, besides the contentiousness of the political climate, it is that life has become a debatable thing, and death means to a perceived freedom.

Harris smilingly talked about her vision for an “opportunity economy,” but it is striking that such an economy of opportunity does not extend to the opportunity to life. She talked optimistically about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, but there can be no two-state solution for mother and child. She pivoted in the debate to talk about how the precious gift of life must be protected through IVF treatments—the same process where lives are flushed down the drain as unceremoniously as they are torn up in the womb. And Trump is little better in this matter, as he shouldered himself in as a leader in IVF and one who will leave murder up to the will of the people in individual states as opposed to the federal government.

“Will you allow abortion in the eighth month? The ninth month?” Trump asked Harris. “Will you veto an abortion ban?” Harris shot back with her own question. Neither had any real answers about anything regarding abortion—except that they support it in their own way because the people want it.

While neither of these candidates, or many Americans for that matter, want to talk about what is really going on in with abortion, Kamala Harris did repeat that she was running to talk about the needs, dreams, and desires of the American people—which includes the ability to destroy an unwanted baby. People may be gawking at Trump’s disgust about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio that are so impoverished they allegedly have to eat dogs and cats, but the real horror is being ignored—because most are well used to ignoring it. It’s an unpleasant, ugly subject, after all, and most suspect that anything like real scrutiny would reveal a reality far more unconscionable than the restrictions Harris called unconscionable.

Abortion is a manifestation of the American way of emphasizing individual good as opposed to human good, or even the common good. By today’s lights, liberty means opportunity, freedom means license, and happiness means luxury. But lives lived according to such uninhibited attitudes and habits often results in new life: life which is inconvenient, unwelcome, and a threat to the libertinism that Americans call liberty. Again, individual good is upheld over a robust view of the ultimate good, and until our political representatives can establish a political framework guided by a traditional anthropology, philosophy, and religion, there can be little hope for a government that will justify such obvious and intrinsic evils as abortion.

As the debate demonstrated, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris want to deliver on this cornerstone of the hedonistic American dream, this postmodern American value of self-service. Abortion eliminates responsibility by eliminating conception, and as such, is a horrific vade mecum in a society that is not guided by any conception of the human good. Seeing how aggressively the candidates leapt upon this topic of topics from their own party’s perspectives and strategies, it is clear that abortion is a lightning rod, a litmus of a fundamental problem—perhaps the fundamental problem—in America and, therefore, in American politics.

Many of the ideals and principles proclaimed by Harris and the Left, as enshrined within her vision, fall flat on their faces when we remember that she believes a woman can murder her unborn baby. All the compassionate words in the world cannot color over Harris’s acceptance of disposing life. And she knows there is a contradiction there, as all who support abortion do; but she and they sweep it away with a blind eye and a ready rationalization.

But she knows the truth. Recall when she gave a speech to mark the 50^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade last year and said, “America is a promise. It is a promise of freedom and liberty—not for some, but for all. A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The conspicuous omission of “life” was no accident.

Even as she vowed to empower Americans to destroy new life during her glossy debate performance, Kamala Harris invoked the importance of the future. She promised to uphold the American people’s ambitions, dreams, and aspirations—and part of realizing that to a people who are addicted and entrenched to selfishness is abortion. But the contradictions here are astonishing. How can Americans realize their ambitions, dreams, and aspirations truly and well without the sanctity of life? How can our lives be meaningful if life is disposable? How can we lay out a plan for society that will fulfill our lives when life itself is a thing debatable?

Kamala Harris, to be clear, paints a far darker picture than the former president. She said in her closings statement that, as Attorney General of California, she always considered the American people her client, and wanted all to know that she will ask us, as she did all of her clients, “Are you ok?” How can she ask that without knowing what “ok” is, what the good is? Politicians like her make passes at the theory of what may be good according to this person or that person, or this group and that group, trying to customize the good according to individual need or desire with remedies that are not wholly remedial.

Again, the idea or reality of the good for humanity is just not part of the debate, but human life is. And without the former, the latter will only get very short shrift.

Catholic World Report