{"id":24170,"date":"2016-04-02T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-02T07:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=24170"},"modified":"2016-04-02T00:01:05","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T07:01:05","slug":"pro-choice-trump-outs-the-anti-abortion-elephant-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/pro-choice-trump-outs-the-anti-abortion-elephant-in-the-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump Outs the Elephant in the Pro-Life Room"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Clip
In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Republican presidential candidate\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0stated that a woman who has an illegal abortion should be punished.\u00a0NBC News\u00a0photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Donald Trump has\u00a0stepped\u00a0in it again. And this time the manure comes from the\u00a0elephant in the room — the pro-life\u00a0room.<\/p>\n

I’m hoping against hope that Donald Trump — pro-life, pro-choice or whatever\u00a0he turns out to be\u00a0— never sets foot in the White House. I’ve got lots of reasons, rational and irrational, but there’s neither time nor space to go\u00a0into them here.<\/p>\n

What I want to point out today\u00a0is\u00a0The Donald’s uncanny ability to upset the apple cart. Thanks to him, the Republican Party, once it regroups, will never be the same again.<\/p>\n

The same goes for the pro-life movement; here’s why:<\/p>\n

The pro-life\/pro-choice conversation has been going on for\u00a0decades. But I can’t think of a time, ever, when a politician has proposed\u00a0that the woman who undergoes an illegal abortion should be considered guilty of a crime.<\/p>\n

The Woman Who Gets\u00a0an Abortion –She’s\u00a0Guilty<\/h5>\n

All that changed abruptly earlier this week, when MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews<\/a> asked\u00a0Trump some tough questions in an interview. Matthews pressed Trump on how things would go for women if abortion were made illegal in the future. Should a woman\u00a0who has an abortion be held criminally responsible?<\/p>\n

Yes, said Trump. \u201cThere has to be some form of punishment.\u201d What that punishment should be, Trump couldn’t say.<\/p>\n

Trump later backed off that position, stating “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,\u201d<\/p>\n

His words came too late. The scales had already fallen\u00a0from my eyes. Before\u00a0the Matthews interview, I (and a lot of other Americans?) had not noticed how\u00a0the pro-life movement proposes to\u00a0give\u00a0a pass to \u00a0a woman who gets an illegal abortion. It very carefully puts the entire criminal\u00a0onus on the —\u00a0faceless — provider.<\/p>\n

I’m guessing that this strategy — never talked about, never copped to — is designed to keep rank-and-file pro-life women from disaffecting.<\/p>\n

After all, if you are seeking to take away women’s right to decide what goes on in their bodies, you don’t tell women voters\u00a0that you plan\u00a0to make\u00a0\u00a0abortion a crime that could send them<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0to prison — or worse. If abortion is murder, as some folks claim, what would be the fitting punishment? Five years in jail? Life? The death penalty?<\/p>\n

BTW, Donald Trump Is Not Smart<\/h5>\n

On second thought,\u00a0I’m going to mention one of the reasons Trump is not fit to be president: He’s\u00a0not smart.<\/p>\n

In their Wednesday interview, Matthews asked Trump whether “the man” should be punished if\u00a0an illegal\u00a0abortion takes place. Donald’s response was\u00a0that, no, the man should not be punished.<\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

I’m not much of a legal mind, but even I can see\u00a0that if the man knows nothing about an illegal\u00a0abortion, he hasn’t committed a crime. But if he assists \u00a0in arranging an illegal\u00a0abortion or helps pay\u00a0for it, he’s clearly an accessory to the crime. And by Donald’s dim lights he, too, should be punished.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump has extricated himself from many a tight spot along the campaign trail this year. But he might not be able to get his foot out of this one.<\/p>\n

More on Donald Trump at “Which Way America? Compassion With Francis — Or Vitriol With Trump?”<\/a>\u00a0 More public figures with feet of — clay —\u00a0at “Will Our Kids Grow Up to Be Cheaters Like Lance Armstrong?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Falconer Newhall Donald Trump has\u00a0stepped\u00a0in it again. And this time the manure comes from the\u00a0elephant in the room — the pro-life\u00a0room. I’m hoping against hope that Donald Trump — pro-life, pro-choice or whatever\u00a0he turns out to be\u00a0— never<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[601,1675,1676,34,1562,82,282,1677,1678],"class_list":["post-24170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-abortion","tag-campaign","tag-chris-matthews","tag-dont-miss","tag-donald-trump","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-politics","tag-pro-choice","tag-pro-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}