More Abortion Whataboutism: Immigration and the Death Penalty
Immigration
It’s hard to find a more abortion-friendly politician than Senator Kamala Harris of California. Like all but three of her fellow Democrats in the U.S. Senate, she voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which does nothing to regulate or restrict abortion procedures. Rather, it would have required physicians to provide the same level of care to a baby who has been born alive from an abortion attempt as a child born from a wanted pregnancy.
Senator Harris, in particular, however, is not merely pro-choice. One could very well argue that she is pro-abortion. When AB 775, the California FACT Act, also dubbed by pro-lifers as “the bully bill” passed in California, Harris was the Attorney General and came out in strong favor of this law. AB 775 is pro-abortion and anti-free speech, as it compels pro-life pregnancy centers to display that abortion services are available from the state for low-cost or even free of charge.
When the bill was being considered in the California state legislature, Harris called California “a national leader in promoting and protecting equal access to the full range of women’s reproductive health care options. Reproductive FACT Act will ensure that women are empowered to make informed and timely decisions about their health and their bodies.” Such words are ironic considering centers which do help women with their options, which happen to not include abortion, were being targeted and bullied into compelled speech by the pro-abortion state.
In 2018’s NIFLA v. Becerra, the U.S. Supreme Court found in favor of pregnancy centers being involved in compelled speech. But, that hasn’t stopped Harris, who is now running for president, to continue her support for abortion.
As glowing as Harris’ support for abortion is, so is her hypocrisy on caring for preborn children. Being a Democrat from California, it’s not so much of a surprise that Harris has taken a stance at odds with the Trump administration on immigration and family separations. I may be a conservative Republican, but I am also a Catholic and the administration’s policies on immigration do not sit well with me. That does not mean I agree with the Democrats, which for many, as admitted by presidential candidate Julián Castro, includes open borders.
Merely minutes before she slammed a 20-week abortion ban to be considered in the U.S. Senate, Harris tweeted out concern for pregnant women who have experienced miscarriages while in ICE custody. I cannot emphasize enough that vulnerable pregnant women, including and especially migrants, ought to be treated with dignity and respect, and that that goes for their unborn children as well. But, being the pro-abortion politician that she is, Harris distinguishes between pregnancies that are wanted and not. If the right to life is a universal human right, including for immigrants, migrants, and refugees, then simply by being a human person should mean that the unborn child is protected. And yet if a mother decides it’s not to be so, Harris is fine with danger of abortion while she decries immigration policy.
Harris’ tweet was brought to my attention by State Senator Owen Hill of Colorado, a Facebook friend of mine. In a Facebook post sharing the tweet, he aptly asked: “How can you have any moral authority decrying an accidental miscarriage when you support voluntary miscarriage (aka abortion) up to the point of birth? It seems that the only logical difference is the desire of the mother. Does this change the moral logic?” No, it does not. But it does make Senator Harris and her pro-abortion ilk hypocrites.
Senator Hill was also kind enough to provide a statement on the issue:
The challenge is that in our post-christian secularism, individual choice is the ultimate good. With this approach, the only real conclusion is when individual choices collide, the only way to arbitrate between them is by a contest of power: might makes right in other words. But under this premise, both the mother choosing to abort her baby and the government detaining immigrants are in the right because they have the power to do so and Ms Harris is hypocritical to support abortion and oppose action detainment. The alternative premise, that life has intrinsic value is more compelling to me and leads me to oppose abortion and to oppose the treatment of our immigrants that endangers life.
I know that if I were the father of a child in one of these situations I would be doing everything I could to give my child the chance to grow up in the United States of America and this compels me to fight for immigration reform that would create better opportunities for those who want to learn our language, follow our constitution, and live the American Dream. I am exhausted by folks on both sides of this debate who do not base their policy approaches on consistent life-affirming principles.
The only thing separating an unborn child resulted from a planned, wanted, healthy pregnancy is the intent of the mother. That child is no less human or deserving of equal human rights, first being the right to life.
To take up the pro-abortion position while at the same time advocating for the safety of wanted pregnancies from migrant women, is not only hypocritical, it forces a sense of faulty logic. The person in support of abortion has to take on a distorted view that human rights for the unborn migrant only matter if the mother thinks they do. Whereas the consistent pro-life position only sees a human person worthy of protection no matter what.
Death Penalty
While I am pro-life without exception, I know the political landscape we operate in is not. It’s why I am in such strong support of common sense reforms, such as the 20-week abortion ban, which will bring the United States closer to the rest of the world on its abortion laws. It’s why I am in support of abortion bans including exceptions for rape and incest. It’s also why I’ve opposed legislation which is unconstitutional when Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are still the law of the land. I’m talking about heartbeat bills which have passed in numerous states, though none have yet to be upheld by the courts. I’m also talking about Alabama legislation which would make an abortion a crime which abortion providers could be jailed for. Here, in this specific blog post, about talking about a Texas bill which could make abortion punishable by the death penalty.
Forget, at least for a moment, that a successful abortion is always a death sentence for an unborn human person, and that it can often carry physical and psychological scars for the mother. As has been eloquently put here by several pro-life experts, the pro-life movement does not wish to punish the woman who seeks an abortion. This is because women are oftentimes the second victim in an abortion. Studies point to many women being coerced, pressured, or even forced into having abortions they do not want to have. Women have also shared, sometimes years later, that they had wished for someone to tell them they didn’t have to have an abortion, or that there was another option, or that there were more resources. Even if a woman is completely fine with her abortion decision, for the rest of her life, she had to make the decision to have an abortion because something happened which she did not want it to, an unplanned and/or problematic pregnancy. If nothing else, these women are victims of their circumstances, not unlike how the unborn are victims of the abortion.
Post-abortive women, especially those who eventually become pro-life, such as former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson, can also offer a valuable perspective to the pro-life movement. Women go through languishing regret from their abortions even without the threat of death. It’s forgiveness which is the pro-life way, not death.
I have had flip-flopping views on the death penalty, from strongly opposed, to a lukewarm supporter, to now opposed and hopeful that states will phase out the death penalty. Texas needs to slow down on its support for this heinous form of punishment, especially as the country and the world is moving away from the death penalty. It is certainly not something to be proud of and it is something to lessen, rather than to expand.
There are those who say violence is wrong, whether the person has been committed a crime or not, and that to be pro-life is against the death penalty. Such is a valid position to take, as is that the death penalty is acceptable in certain instances, since, unlike an innocent unborn child, the person being put to death has been convicted of a crime. What does not have a place in our civil society on debating abortion, is meeting death of the innocent unborn children with the death of vulnerable women who are victims of their circumstances.
Such legislation ought not to pass, though even if it goes nowhere, is no way to represent the pro-life movement. In fact, it is likely to set it back and portray pro-lifers as people who want to punish women, even with death, for their mistakes. That is not what the pro-life movement is about. The pro-life movement is about loving and helping women, even if they choose abortion.
