The right to life is never far away from the heart of American politics. The recent US election was no different. The reason that Democrats experience total meltdown over all things Trump, especially in relation to nominations to the Supreme Court, mostly comes back to the core feminist demand for the right to abortion.
The latest – and still contested – US presidential election is yet another in the series of elections which are intimately caught up with the problem of legal abortion. Throughout recent decades US elections from the 1970’s through to Trump and Clinton and now Trump and Biden, the issue of abortion has weighed heavily in the minds of many voters, clergy and commentators.
This time, the media are claiming that Biden has defeated Trump – the most pro-life President of recent times certainly and perhaps ever. However, the American Electoral College – the official arbiter of elections – has not given any decision and nor can they whilst legal challenges remain in the Courts and the evidence for widespread voter fraud is stacking up. Trump’s legal team has at least seven court challenges underway, including one which has made its way to the Supreme Court.
While it has been disturbing to see the media proclaiming Biden as the winner prematurely in order to try and bully a concession from Trump, this kind of propaganda is not without precedent. In 2000, when Al Gore was running against George W Bush, the media jumped the gun and broke the news that Gore had been elected. However, voter fraud was detected and a legal challenge ensued; it took 37 days for the definitive result of that election to be declared.
PRI’s Steve Mosher, who has the confidence of senior Trump campaign insiders, remains optimistic about the outcome of any case that makes it to the Supreme Court. While pointing out that both Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett worked on President Bush’s legal team after the 2000 election, Mosher writes:
“But the President has known for a long time that election fraud is a key part of that playbook. He’s spoken about such chicanery in interviews, at press conferences, and at rallies.
Don’t you think that, knowing this, he wouldn’t have factored in the likelihood of election fraud as he made his Supreme Court picks over the past four years?
In appointing Bush v. Gore veterans, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court, a brilliant strategist whose last name begins with “T” was thinking ahead several moves to this very moment.
In the game of chess, we have a word for what is coming. We call it “checkmate.”
What has been more alarming for Catholics worldwide is seeing the USCCB, the American Jesuits and even Pope Francis jumping prematurely onto the liberal bandwagon to congratulate the pro-abortion “Catholic” Joe Biden on his “win.” Liberal Catholic media and Vatican mouthpieces are lauding Biden as ‘the second Catholic President’ of the United States. Never mind Biden’s whole-hearted support for abortion and LGBTIQ rights; apparently the only credentials required by progressives in the Church is a Baptismal certificate and a politically correct ideology.
Ex-gay and now solidly Catholic Joseph Sciambra has been scathing in his response to the liberal Church’s endorsement of Joe Biden. As he wrote on social media:
“What kind of organization allows someone to remain a member even though they openly flout its basic tenets? The same kind of organization that allows predator priests (and bishops & cardinals) to openly flout the Church’s basic tenets and remain in good standing; on this point, Scientology is more consistent and credible.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many political leaders worldwide are also congratulating Biden. This includes our own Scott Morrison, as well as Canada’s extremely liberal Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Boris Johnson. The ramifications of a win for Biden are already being felt in this country, as commentators and Labor politicians renew their push for Australia to enact more ridiculously extreme climate change policies, in line with the Democrats’ radical Green agenda.
But it is fairly obvious that the real reason Trump’s potential victory is being ignored by the secular media is because of his commitment to life. While his economic strategy during the pandemic and his decision to leave the Paris Agreement might irritate progressives, nothing has enraged them more than his growing opposition to abortion rights.
As FLI’s Paul Hanrahan stated,
”Trump was the first President ever to appear at a March for Life. The speech he gave there was clearer and more passionate than those we hear from most of our Bishops.”
“Trump speaks then acts and his commitment to bringing down the abortion industry is a credit to his defence of life.”
By contrast, the promotion of abortion is part and parcel of the Democrats’ platform. Joe Biden has specifically pledged to stop state laws that “violate” Roe vs Wade and wants to codify that law across his nation. He has promised to return federal funding for Planned Parenthood and to rescind the Mexico City Policy, under which the US has refused to fund international organisations that provide abortion services. The Democrats also want to restore the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate which forces businesses (including Catholic charities, schools and organisations) to fund their employees’ contraceptives.
Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, may be even more firmly committed to abortion than Biden; her political campaigns are partly funded by Planned Parenthood and abortion lobby groups. Harris is a former district attorney and also served as Attorney-General in California. During that time, she tried to enact a law forcing pregnancy centres to advertise for abortion. Harris is also the subject of legal action by David Daleiden who claims that she and her successor tried to manipulate California state video-recording laws to ensure that Planned Parenthood’s illegal dealing in aborted baby parts could not be exposed by pro-lifers like Daleiden. Many people, including us here at FLI, expect that the unelectable Kamala Harris would soon replace Biden if he was to be elected.
Even if Trump can be proven to have won this election, it does seem that the race was relatively close. Certainly Biden legally garnered tens of millions of votes. America’s obsession with abortion rights could prompt us to wonder how much of that nation’s social problems are related to abortion. Is the phenomenon known as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in reality abortion derangement syndrome?
When we see thousands of men and especially women, screaming – yelling at the top of their lungs – incoherent slogans about Trump, blasphemies, curse words, etc. – are they really saying that, “life will end the day abortion access is restricted” or are they instead crying from a place of deep pain, “life ended the day I killed my child?” Monsignor Philip Reilly would say many coming out of abortion mills after their abortion would say “can God ever love me again?” He would say “He never stopped loving you, the question is will you love God again?”
How much of the looting, the violence, the vandalism that America has witnessed for the past six months is fuelled by the grief of abortion? Of course, there are other factors at play: Marxist indoctrination inherent in entitlement and victimhood mentalities, seditious activity funded by globalists, exaggerated claims of racism and inequity, the factual likelihood that black Americans will be poorer and are more likely to be incarcerated.
But can we forget that black Americans are also more likely to abort their children?
How much of the protests are energised by disenfranchised grief due to the loss of aborted siblings, or of a childhood spent with a post-abortive mother, or of absent fathers who could not face the shame of their failure to protect their children? We will never know.
Whatever the outcome of this election, it serves to remind us that America’s elections are less about a war between Republicans and Democrats than they are about the abortion wars.
America doesn’t merely count the loss of millions of babies killed by abortion: she grieves for them, whether this is loss is acknowledged or not. Biden and Harris represent the countless millions who grieve yet choose to reject God’s mercy, harden their hearts then fight to have abortion enshrined as a national right in order to justify their own “choices.”
Trump represents those who, having tasted and experienced the pain and vacuous promises of the culture of death, repent and turn their back on that existence which they found to be wanting in so many ways.
