He is an OUTSIDER. He doesn’t fit —for example not pro-life or pro-choice pre-molded positions.
He actually uses his brain cells. He doesn’t get it right on the first try but he listens. Eventually he’ll make a good deal.
Think about the furor over his latest abortion comments. He has shown the hollowness of BOTH positions in a few brief sentences.
First, he pondered that there needed to be some form of punishment, and that surely that would include the woman, and perhaps not the man. Then his campaign said of course the woman was a victim, trying to pull back to an establishment pro-life position.
If you are in the pre-molded pro-choice camp, unless the woman has experienced rape, incest, or a medical condition threatening her life you don’t believe the woman is a victim. You think she is an accountable adult making decisions for her own life, and you do not acknowledge there is another life form yet that should have moral weight in that decision. You do not acknowledge any right of others to intrude for the best interests of a larger society. In this worldview there is no crime, and no victim, and no punishment required. There are also fewer babies to adopt, and a lower reproduction rate than our biology would drive. Whatever that potential baby is, it is alive. Whether you give it the moral status more like a human or more like a puppy or more like cells you grew in a petri dish, it is alive. This position as pre-molded rings hollow because whatever the woman is doing, it affects more than her life alone. Whatever her situation, it is difficult, and we all know the best decisions are not made alone in a crisis.
If you are in the patriarchal worldview that many pre-molded pro-lifers seem to occupy, and that some fathers who want out seem to push on their women, the woman is treated not quite as an adult fully capable of a rational decision. That is the only way you can consider her a victim if there was not a rape, incest or medical condition. What exactly would she have been a victim of? A bankrupt moral society that teaches her sex is just another pleasure and that she can have power over men with her good looks? A technology failure of her birth control?? If a woman is an accountable adult, and if she has failed to prevent pregnancy shouldn’t she be accountable, after all? You can see that thought coursing through Trump as he struggles with the question. He wants to treat women as adults, and the pro-life view takes her adult decision-making accountability away from her. It is equally hollow.
If the woman were a victim of drug addiction, we would seek to treat her but we would also examine if she should punished for any crimes she may have committed. We’d struggle with treating it as primarily a crime or a medical condition. Why are we so sure if women are adults and abortion is bad, that we wouldn’t want to counterbalance the pain of continued pregnancy with a consequence that would deter abortion? Say a tax large enough to give pause on the abortion, used for children’s health? Donald Trump’s outside view might not be tenable, but it is worthy of more thought than the politicians jumped to in their pre-molded positions. If it’s not tenable, at least he is still listening. I don’t see any of the other candidates trying to forge new territory here.
A growing portion of America is pro-life and pro-choice. Most of America recognizes women ARE adults and should be accountable as the assigned decision-maker. Most of America looks at the sonogram on the fridge of a pre-born baby and knows it is alive, and will be human. Most of us don’t think anyone should be sentenced by the status of our parents — we live in America, the land of the free, the land of opportunity! The potential baby should get its shot — be that with biological mom or adoptive parents. Donald Trump may be crass, and he may not be a professional politician, but he is thinking and listening and while he has escaped the clutches of past Democratic leanings, he is quite clearly not yet a captive of the Republican establishment.
Maybe he’ll figure out how to get more modern day Alexander Hamilton-like kids their shot at life. Hamilton’s mother wasn’t well off, or married, and didn’t survive long enough to fully raise him.
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