This week Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, in his usual wing-it fashion, told an MSNBC audience that if abortion was illegal then the woman getting the abortion is committing a crime and therefore should stand trial for said crime. This caused the predictable outcry from pro-choice advocates and Democrats, but unconscionably, it also drew the ire of conservative Republicans. This makes no sense and someone should point this out.
Pro-Life advocates conveniently want it both ways; they continue to woo the woman vote while also stating that abortion is murder and should be deemed such. Who exactly then is the murderer? The doctor? Does the doctor enter the woman’s room late at night and yank the fetus from her or does the woman make a difficult choice to terminate the pregnancy, then, in their ideological view, walk willingly and knowingly into the clinic and murder the fetus?
This is why I state emphatically that if I were a woman in no way, shape or form would I ever support a major political party that stands by the concept of allowing the government to manipulate my insides. Ever. Whatever side you fall on in this very difficult issue, you cannot support the government deciding what happens inside the body of a tax-paying citizen protected by the Bill of Rights. It is not only unconstitutional, it is insane. It leads to a world in which if there is over-population, then the government can decide who lives and who dies and could one day force women with “too many children” to get abortions.
But if you strongly believe that it is the right and moral foundation for the United States government to protect innocents—unless innocents happen to be gay, undocumented, the elderly with no money, or the random black kid gunned down by rogue cops; then fuck them—it stands to reason you deem abortion murder, and therefore that murder must have a perpetrator. Conservative phonies like Ted Cruz, who is now fully immersed in the establishment, despite his charade of stating he is anti-establishment whilst asking the party to coalesce behind him to stop the actual anti-establishment candidate, like to tell us that in this weirdly constructed reality, the woman is the victim of this “crime”.
Really?
Then why do we put drug offenders in jail or bust drunk drivers? They are merely victims of the terrible drug dealers and liquor stores and bars who serve them dope and libations. When someone hits you with their car, do they seek out the manufacturer? Is Ford responsible for the guy who hits you? So, I ask; in what crazed dystopian nightmare does a woman who gets an abortion somehow translate to victim?
I guess Ted Cruz is a bleeding heart liberal who believes somehow that society, the prison system, and the Beatles were guilty of ritualistic murder, and not poor, victimized Charles Manson.
If abortion is murder, then the woman should go to jail. Trump is correct and has continued to be the gift that keeps giving for the free thinkers among us who believe that the abject lies the Republican Party has been selling for decades about military build-ups and asinine wars, Wall Street, free-trade unregulated nonsense, and haughty attacks on social issues are stupid and antiquated and have become sad, fringe positions that have no place in an advancing world.
But that is politics, and we are not dealing with politics today, just like we are not dealing in morals here, ever; we are merely dealing with personal liberty and the law, which rightly gives a tax-paying citizen protected by the Bill of Rights control over her body. However, if that law should change, and abortion becomes illegal, then you explain to me how a woman who seeks an abortion does not break the law? And if you break the law, should you not pay for your crime? And if that crime is murder, then should you not be sentenced to life imprisonment, and in some states, face execution?
I believe Trump when he repeatedly says, “You either have a country or you don’t.”
So, where does this dribbling nonsense of staunchly defending the unborn while simultaneously absolving the woman killing this child come from?
Now, the cynic in me understands the campaign landscape of shock and dismay is wholly motivated by a #nevertrump effort. Trump, like Obama, could espouse the entire GOP platform and someone on the right will get in a tizzy and blame them for pissing on God’s head. This is about taking Trump down, while simultaneously keeping the false notion of deeming abortion a crime against humanity while somehow absolving the architect, so women will vote Republican in the fall. Period.
The main discussion about abortion really comes down to the idea that you must accept that you are indeed terminating a life when you have one. As a supporter of pro-choice, I also get tough with those who support same when they deny that this is not the case, that somehow this glob of tissue is not life or to make things cushy, some sub-life or pre-form of life. Technology and advanced science now prove with no doubt that life is being terminated. Whether this constitutes murder, as it is described in the annals of civilization or our current structure of law, is another argument I shall not make here. But I have been asking my pro-life friends now for decades; how exactly do you accept the premise that the government has a right to adjudicate what is inside a citizen’s body? The government has no right to burst into your apartment and begin rummaging around, but your body is open season?
And how do you police this matter?
Donald Trump says you arrest the murderer, and he is right.
But that is shocking to us, because we cannot imagine someone being arrested for such a thing. So, in abject panic that we can now see their draconian oligarchy correctly, the right-wing moral loons scramble to tell you Trump is nuts. Well, of course he’s nuts, but so is the notion that the government can arrest a woman for this. So, they make up some wild story about the woman merely being a victim.
Poor, unknowing, weak, and distressed female, whose only purpose is to plunk out babies on demand; you will not be held responsible for the thing you just did. But, of course, you will, and you should, and if you don’t think that is coming if Roe v Wade is overturned, which the Republican Party wants—including Ted Cruz and John Kasich, no matter how much they try and distance themselves from it—then you are not listening to the pro-life movement. This is what they want; to make abortion illegal, which means if you happen to have a vagina, it is time to watch your step.
If the premise introduced to Donald Trump on MSNBC this week is correct, and one day we are faced with abortion being illegal, then women will need to stand trial for murder.
Any other conclusion to this is a lie.
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James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. and his new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon”.
