GOP Abortion Hypocrisy Trap

Donald Trump got caught in the GOP abortion hypocrisy trap this week when he chose to follow his natural intellectual instincts and be logically consistent regarding his pro-life stance on abortion. He found out the hard way that among the gaggle of GOP hypocrites in the Republican Party it doesn’t pay to be logically consistent when the issue involves abortion.

Liberal Democrat MSNBC news anchor Chris Matthews shrewdly laid out the trap at a town hall campaign event in Wisconsin, asking Trump to comment on who should be punished for the crime of abortion if Congress successfully made abortion illegal in the United States and the legislation were upheld by the federal courts.

“I am pro-life…  There has to be some form of punishment,” said Trump. 

“…For the woman?” Matthews asked. 

“Yeah,” Trump responded, it would “have to be determined.”

 Of course, Trump’s statement was perfectly logically consistent. If abortion were illegal and a woman chose to have an abortion she would be engaging in an illegal activity right  along with the doctor performing the procedure and therefore it is logical and only makes sense to assume that both should be subject to the punishment prescribed by the law.

But logical consistency is not acceptable to a hypocrite and both Republican and Democrat hypocrites alike pounced on Trump’s comment calling it a huge mistake which alone should disqualify him from becoming President of the United States.

Trump’s rival, Ohio Gov. John Kasich told MSNBC: “...of course women shouldn’t be punished.” 

“Trump doesn't understand the pro-life position because he's not pro-life,” explained a spokesman for rival Ted Cruz, and Cruz himself said that Trump’s statement was “pathological.”

“[Donald Trump] knows there’s no way he can undo the damage of the abortion statement,” declared Fox News Special Report hypocrite Charles Krauthammer. 

Judge Andrew Napolitano, another Fox New hypocritical pundit heartily agreed that saying women should be punished for abortion if abortion were illegal was a huge mistake which very likely will spell the doom for his campaign.

As I posted last January, this is the same Andrew Napolitano who wrote an op-ed piece opining that abortion is murder; abortion is killing babies; and all human beings are “persons” endowed with a full palate of federal constitutional rights from the moment of conception. Virtually every pro-lifer anti-abortion advocate I know agrees that abortion is murder.

But Trump found out to his dismay that the very same pro-lifers who insist that abortion is murder take the position that women should not be punished for it. In short, their hypocritical position is that women should be allowed to get away with murder; only the abortionist should be punished.

A top official with the March for Life condemned Trump’s comments, calling him “completely out of touch with the pro-life movement… Being pro-life means wanting what is best for the mother and the baby…  No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about.”

"None of the other candidates would have made that mistake," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports anti-abortion legislation and candidates.

So the Donald, faced with this hypocritical outcry from both pro-life Republican’s and pro-choice Democrats, was immediately compelled to become a hypocrite himself and completely walk back his logically consistent position. 

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” he said in a written statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

Huh? The woman who conspires with and hires a doctor to kill her baby is a victim? She must not be punished? If she hires a hit man to murder her husband, is she a victim? How can she be a victim in one instance of murder but not in the other?

Hypocrisy, that’s how; only with hypocrisy.  

The Donald got caught in the GOP abortion hypocrisy trap.