Turn the tables on trump and tell him that if Roe v Wade is overturned there will be a “huge” uptick in “non-white” population. I’m certain he would believe it given his stupidity and racism and bigotry...the list goes on.
8
He’s not stupid about 2020. One by one, nailing down the conservative single-issue voters. This one. Cuban travel restrictions. The extreme side of gun rights people. Anti-Muslims. White supremacists.
Someone once referred to these segments as “deplorables.”
3
Protector of unborn children, but not their pregnant mothers, and tormentor of born children, especially black, brown, and poor ones.
9
I wonder how many pregnant single women, learning that their food stamp benefits are being cut, will opt for abortion rather than bringing another hungry mouth into the world? Trump is no friend to “life.”
9
“Human Rights Begin in the Womb”
And shall be immediately rescinded upon delivery.
11
Born children not so much.
5
We can whine about the hypocrisy of a president who cheats on his wife with porn stars but the evangelicals don’t care if their savior is an imperfect vessel. He is a means to an end to a wanted goal of outlawing abortion and family planning.
This is the government we deserve. This is what we get for voting third party, for not voting, for thinking it doesn’t matter if we vote and for taking a flyer on what some people thought was the lesser of two evils.
Let this be a lesson to all of us.
8
God only knows how many abortions Trump has forced women to have. I was going to say, "paid for" but we already know he never pays his debts.
9
Trump could care less about abortion — he’s pandering to a religious base who doesn’t know the difference between an honest man and a con man.
4
One could have a long and lively debate about what is the most disgusting aspect of Trump’s political opportunism, but his marriage of hypocritical self-interest with the intolerant religious zealots in the anti-choice movement would top most lists.
7
Sadly he has more compassion for the unborn than the born.
4
As I recall, Genesis says that G-d gave both Adam and Eve the “breath of life.” To me that implies life begins with the first breath, not conception.
4
Why mince? Evangelicalism at this point in time is no longer a religion but a mental disease. Trump is simply vote grabbing from the bottom of the barrel, from those with an agenda which hurts women and men both, because lest we forget, men are involved in the making of children too. Most countries recognize a woman's life should not be legislated in this manner. When did we become so backward we must legislate a woman's choice of what to do with her body? I don't see any legislation holding men back.
5
Donald Trump addressing an anti-abortion rally is like W. C. Fields at an AA meeting.
6
If Trump thought mass murderers would vote for him he would embrace looser gun laws and get closer to the NRA. Anything that can get a vote.
Oops seems he has already covered those items. Sorry women's rights and just about anybody else.
3
Human rights begin at the womb for this group, and sadly, end at birth.
4
Right, by cutting food stamps and health care to their parents, including the working poor. Lucky, lucky children! He's also the least racist person who ever lived, the smartest, and nobody values women and [fill in the blank] more than he does.
Before you sign that bill of sale for the Brooklyn Bridge, here's an example of how the President's compassion overcomes personal enmities from the 1/4/16 New Yorker:
"Even when it comes to a sick baby in his family, Donald Trump is all business. The megabuilder and his siblings Robert and Maryanne terminated their nephew’s family medical coverage a week after he challenged the will of their father, Fred Trump. “This was so shocking, so disappointing and so vindictive,” said niece Lisa Trump, whose son, William, was born 18 months ago at Mount Sinai Medical Center with a rare neurological disorder that produces violent seizures, brain damage and medical bills topping $300,000."
Good luck!
5
Fake morals from President Trump us usual.
The honest name those opposing the legal right of women to choose abortion is not "pro-life". It's anti-person.
If the so-called pro-lifers were rationally and morally consistent, they would be PETA members actively opposing the killing all the animals that we like to eat. Pigs, ducks, fish and cows are all living organisms every bit as much as any human foetus.
The fact is that those opposing abortion on the grounds that it kills a living organism are hypocrites unless they also oppose steak, bacon and delicious roast duck. Do they?
That Trump pretends to agree with them says something disturbing about both him and the "pro-life" anti-person voting constituency.
1
Shouldn't it be called the
March For Birth ( not Life)?
5
I guess Lincoln was a little off, Trump is able to fool way many more of some of the people, all of the time. If he fools enough of some of the people all of the time in the right districts, he wins the electoral college again.
1
Certainly Trump (and Miller) are the most passionate anti-abortion defender of this administration. They need children to be caged.
3
Trump will say anything to get the evangelical vote. Anything.
6
He'll do anything for a vote - anything!
4
Do these folks really think there will ever be a world with forced birthing when simple pill is easily available and any number of criminal networks would be eager to invest in underground abortion?
It is typical of people lead by simplistic ideologies who give up the burden and responsibility of thought and constructive solutions that minimize harms. A pathetic moribund movement.
5
When I see the Anti abortionists include war in their agenda, then will I take them seriously. Seems the incinerating of children by our bombs, death by starvation or deadly water contamination, from sanctions, means little to them. Case in point..Yemen, worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.
6
When the so-called right to lifers begin offering to pay pregnant females for their services in carrying unwanted tissues to term, I will consider their ideas. Until then, it is the same old story: females are breeding stock to be controlled by others.
6
It seems the scoundrel has met the fools...though certainly not the first of either. This is certainly a sad occasion, belief in someone who does not now or has ever deserved it. Pandering to emotional rather than rational thought has never gotten us anything but racism, fear of vaccines, hatred of Muslims and Catholics and Jews and the wish to subjugate the rights and urgent needs of "other" women. An unholy alliance.
3
Lets see now, I'm a wealthy Republican donor and my teenage daughter is pregnant by her boyfriend. I'll just fly her to France and presto changeo problem solved . Too bad for those commoners.
5
It's not just abortion these folks would like to ban but many forms of birth control. Why should their beliefs supersede mine and others?
4
So are these people also fighting the death penalty? Children in cages at the border? Cutting nutrition aid to poor families?
4
I guess the "good news" is that he's playing to an audience who voted for him last time, and the net increase in 2020 will be negligible.
Just as his support of women and children and families and ... unless they are "approved" by him ... which of course is different both from his statements 5 years ago and his own personal lifestyles.
For example, in the Roman Catholic Church, premarital and extramarital sex is a mortal sin.
But yeah, he BRAGS about loading courts with people who will impose their definition of the ultimate Bible that HAS to guide us all ...
5
Trump is really saying, " I'm using those of you vote per the single issue if abortion ."
2
Yes, the same Donald Trump who took out a full-page ad to urge that five young black men be put to death for a crime it was conclusively proven they did not commit is now talking about his commitment to the right to life.
6
Does anyone really believe the most morally bankrupt president in history gives one iota about abortion outside of what it gets him at the ballot box? Everyone seems to be getting what they want regardless of the blatant display of hypocrisy.
6
What better way to show how "precious life is" than by taking innocent children away from their parents, putting them in prisons, deporting those parents, and keeping no record of it?
With "friends" like Donald Trump and his administration, children don't need enemies. They have a real life boogie man in the White House who's willing to destroy their lives, on a whim, for personal political gain.
What Donald Trump understands about how "precious life is", is about the same as what Harvey Weinstein understands about "consent".
8
Every single person there is not there for anti-choice. This is all a charade. These people are desperate for attn and will choose the most controversial topic in order to get it. They want to provoke people as trumpers like to do. That's why they demean all human beings not in their cult. This is a ridiculous display of desperation on people who could care less about human lives. What about the lives at the border, lives lost in Turkey after trump moved US troops, Ukrainian lives lost when trump held aid, how about the assassination of a general and without a valid reason to do it and what about the US troops that are suffering brain damage right now and US troops still fighting wars that Republican war hawks love to start, the list goes on and on. This is a pathetic last ditch effort from single minded people to deflect from their real intentions. Votes, look Christian, etc.
5
I love hearing how people conceive of ‘life’ as one great flowing continuum when they are talking about someone else’s life but of course not their own.
3
He and the Republicans want women to give birth but they cut off all aid and assistance once the baby is born. They deny basic living accommodations such as an affordable place to live, food, clothing, medical(for the mother and the baby). Schools are being decimated because of lack of money. The environment cannot take an extended population (look at Hong Kong). Yet they do not seem to look further ahead as to what this country will look like in 30 to 40 years with pollution etc. I would have more sympathy if they did. They are pro birth - not pro life.
5
I advocate that Democrats should play a different game. The fact is that Democrats will not win in Anti-Abortion states anyway. Why then wasting political capital and loosing votes in pro-abortion states.
Democrats on a national level should be neutral. It must most not be a discussion on the federal level.
The position should be: Let the states decide. Let the Supreme Court rescind Roe v. Wade it it wants to; which they will likely not do.
If however the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade the anti-abortion states will suffer the consequences. Let them have it. Let them deal with the public health crises. Let them deal with the illegal abortions. Let them deal with the unwanted babies and the deaths due to botched abortions.
2
Of course he is a strong defender. He needs every last vote those evangelical politicians can deliver from their politicized flocks.
1
When women throughout the world are educated, respected as individuals and attain control of their reproduction, there are far fewer abortions because there are far fewer conceptions. But this all means less power for the patriarchal aspects of our world by eliminating the influence and power of all patriarchs. But they do not like this loss of power and thus rant and rave about abortion.
3
does anyone really believe Trump believes in anything except himself? The man is a textbook example of narcisstic megalomania..Back him into a corner, and there is no telling what he will do. No rational assessment of a person with not normal thinking will result in a rational end. Don' t you get it yet America? Trump is not about America or what you believe. Trump is about Trump.
2
Words don't depict what a hypocritical, disingenuous and politicized moment for Trump. One might juxtapose his pious verbiage newly found religiosity against his "Christian past": documented extramarital affairs (aka, adultery), an avowed pro-choice advocate, multiple divorces, documented sexual assault by first wife. Trump a devout Christian or a politically motivated opportunist - hard not to emphatically suggest the latter.
3
Faith transcends reason and understanding. Those who support the unborn have a point - life is endowed with unbound possibilities that only God know. It’s the grace of God which is unconditional and irresistible.
That said, I’m a little concerned that faith or actually the social aspect of religion becomes entangled with the government.
I wish to quote some fancy words I overheard from an undergrad student who was presenting a poster on her studies on “March for our lives”, ‘a fetus in the womb becomes a Foucaudian heteropia .. similar to the otherness experienced by other minority groups’
I’m pro choice. I’m also pro life for children to be housed, fed, and educated. I guess that makes me a socialist.
5
“Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,”
Unfortunately Trump doesn't give a HOOT about those children once they ARE born. And forget about those desperate women that will be forced back into the dark alleys and dirty kitchens. When these kids end up being abused by the system and poverty trump will complain that these people are a drain on the system.
Who knew preventing legal abortions could be so complicated?
Naturally Trump pandering to anti abortion rallies is just another transparent attempt to use THEM to HIS advantage right now. When it comes down to it, he can't be counted on by either side unless it's helpful to Trump personally at THAT moment.
2
As usual the “president” cons the rubes with statements that in high probability have no basis of fact: "“The far left is actively working to erase our God-given rights,” Mr. Trump said, adding that they wanted to “silence Americans who believe in the sanctity of life.”.”
What the “president” should realize his the far “right” evangelicals, those who claim they are Christian, and the right to life movement is attempting to stifle any pro choice decisions.
Yet Trump, in his uncanny ability to fool those susceptible to the con artistry he practices, quite possibly believes he is pro-life. No, Trump is pro-Trump and if his phony embrace of pro-life initiatives gains him votes, well, his lies and deceit will have paid off.
I am pro-neutral. I believe the decision to have children or abort a pregnancy belongs to those, and only those, people concerned.
But, those at that rally apparently believe it is their duty, their right, to interfere and impose their beliefs on the population through codification of those beliefs into law.
But, hey, Trump fooled those willing “marks” and that is all that he needs. And by the end of the weekend he will have forgotten this performance.
I have a closely held religious belief that I have autonomy regarding my body. No one gets to tell me what I can and can't do with it.
4
How convenient he rallies with the most outdated and passionate republican population on the planet while the case for the ultimate punishment any president could receive is being articulated so well just a block away. For all his ignorance and folly, going straight to the heart of his base (and abortion for the right is issue #1,2,&3) to get his ego some medicine is actually the best move he could have made.
Christ would not approve of our current President. There were only two commandments in the New Testament, love God and love your neighbor. This President falls short in both as he only loves himself.
1
No woman ever wants an abortion, right?
Males produce billions of sperm and women produce thousands of eggs over a lifetime and at most a typical U.S. family will have 2.2 children after all is said and done.
The worst thing that can happen to a woman is for her to have a child when she’s not ready wherein a support system is not in place to ensure the healthy development of her child—so—the thing that is most disturbing about the anti-abortion group is that they would appear to be highly interested in saving the child when it cannot think and reason as a small fetus, but then throw stones in its way when it can think and reason after birth. Why would any mother want to bring a child into a world where it gets thrown into an unsupported life? This does not mean a guaranteed free-stuff life, rather the proper investment in the development of the child a first-world country can and should afford.
The cruelty of an abortion during the first weeks of pregnancy is nothing compared to the cruelty the child will face after nine months when the proper support is not there. I do not remember President Trump saying anything regarding this issue (Support after birth).
Indeed, since he was able to avoid the draft as a potential soldier, seeing perhaps the futile effects of going to useless wars, it would stand to reason that he should understand the decision of a mother to not bring a child into the world if the first act the state provides is to send it into a trench!
1
Thanks to the NY Times for calling it for what it is. This is an anti-abortion rally not a pro-life rally. These people have shown no compassion to the women who need to terminate a pregnancy nor for the babies who are born from an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. They support a man who has shown extremely negative sexual actions toward women, a man who has serially committed adultery, a man who works to prohibit the commands of Christ to feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, etc. Let's put Christ back into Christian. I am a proud Christian and these people do NOT speak for me
6
There were 10,000 people at the 2020 women’s march (a few hundred thousand at its zenith). There were 1 MILlION people at the March for Life in DC this year, hundreds of thousands annually.
Reading the Times (go ahead and search), one would think there were millions at the original women’s march (there are even articles conflating national statistics in order to exaggerate the presence in DC). One never hears mention of numbers in the scanty media coverage of the pro life marches, which draw hundreds of thousands of people annually. While the media gets very excited about womens’ marches, it does not headline pro life marches no matter the greater numbers (unless of course to unfairly exaggerate a link to the reviled Trump- if Obama would have been willing to speak at the rally he would have been welcomed).
Objectivity is simple, Report the facts. Oh, and not selectively. The bias is almost unconscionable.
2
So your side gets to have the most radical right wing policies in U.S. history AND the most morally corrupt demagogue ever, but your price is, sorry, you don’t get to have progressive policies ever, even if the person is morally strong? No deal. Sorry. Bernie 2020!
Here's Trump's deal with the Pro-life groups.
Trump-
"You forget that I'm a serial philander, that I'm monetizing the office of the presidency. You turn a blind eye to my abuse of power and that I cut deals with foreign governments to attack my domestic political appointments. Do all this, and I'll make legal abortion illegal and I'll tear down the separation between church and state. That's the deal."
2
I'll guess there are also a fair number of Christians saying, "hate the sin, love the sinner", while hoping that 'lil DJ Trump does something that they believe is in their best interest. You know, lower taxes, no need to have health insurance, and also a fake "pro life" stance.
“the most pro life President in history.”
Tell that to the children starving to death in Yemen, a land and nation cut off from basic resources for living by Saudis, supplied with the weapons of war by the US: the same Saudi autocracy which ravished a Saudi citizen in Istanbul, who was living in the US, working as a a journalist for the Washington Post.
Tell that to the caged, neglected children, some of whom have died, in camps for migrants as an outcome of The Chosen One’s policies who behaves as if he is above the law. Daily.
Tell that to those whose health insurance is at stake.
Tell that to those whose life expectancies will be diminished and qualities of life will be worsened because of his environmental policies.
Tell that to those whose daily coping, adapting and functioning are violated by policies which enable and even empower a toxic WE-THEY culture which creates, selects and targets “the other” for discrimination. Exclusion. Dehumanization. Marginalization. By words and deeds.
Tell it loud and clearly.
To the willfully deaf.
To the willfully blind.
To the willfully indifferent.
To the willfully ignorant.
To the minions who...
4
No, friends, people who are pro-life won't come for contraception next. The slippery slope fallacy is still a fallacy, even in this case
1
@WVD, the Trump administration wants to allow employers to refuse to cover contraception in their health insurance benefits.
12
Forced birthers are against free readily accessible contraception and sex education.
7
What’s really unsettling is that even if abortion were to become illegal, women who were desperate would still find a way to have them, albeit less safely, or worse yet try to end their pregnancies themselves. So then, if both mother and baby die is that appropriate “punishment”?
The pro-life mantra is archaic and misogynistic.
7
@ArtIsWork:
And it's not "pro-life." It's forced-birth.
3
It would be absolutely shocking if Trump, with his background and other actions, did not pay for abortions over the years when it served his needs. He is doing this now to pander to his base, the misguided Evangelicals and others. This issue should be a woman’s personal health care decision. If these people really want to reduce the number of abortions, then support groups like Planned Parenthood and other responsible family planning organizations who have through their efforts reduced those numbers. Abortions occurred before Roe vs Wade and will continue no matter what. Wealthy ( including wealthy so called religious ) women will still have access to safe abortions while the poor won’t. The other hypocrisy of these zealots, of the GOP and Trump is that they claim to be “Pro Life “ but their actions are consistently Anti Child. They undermine health care access for children, vaccinations for children, food support programs for children, etc, etc. And finally , if they believe in God’s control over everything, then miscarriages are God’s version of abortion.
8
Trump is not known for telling the truth, and if it doesn't suit him to deliver on the "strong defender" image he is trying to cultivate, he'll just brush it off. Never in the past has he demonstrated any convincing religious feeling, and the right-to-lifers at today's march are dreaming if they assume that he will honor his promises if they vote for him. And of course, that's why he was there.
4
This is very frightening. Could there be any clearer sign that Donald Trump is an avatar of the fascist impulse in human history and affairs? The pro-life movement has an exceedingly dark past and its anti-abortion stance is a smoke screen which disguises the true essence of its motivation.
If the sanctity of life mattered then a leader like a Trump would not brag about the resources he’s chosen to squander on our already-bloated military budget while at the same time seeking to reduce funding to fight child poverty, protect the planet, give people access to affordable health care. This is about patriarchal control of women, period. Whether it’s mullahs, National Socialists, or the Catholic Church, the desire to oppress and exploit females is an ever-present hallmark of regimes whose supposed reverence for babies leads to atrocities in the name of God and country.
12
Anti Choice Zealots! The people who insist you have a baby even if your father or brother raped you. Won't help you raise it. If the person then grows up and commits what they feel is a capitol offense, will be the first to call for the Death Penalty, believe that the man made crisis that is defiling our planet is a hoax and who put their full support in a man who lies pathologically, sexually assaults women and is crafting an enabling body of unconstitutional lying political hacks to help him be King.
OK, I think I'm getting this. Trump really could be the Pro-life knight and then shoot that person on 5th Ave.
I'm really getting the hang of this dark future these whiners ushered in by hating progressive causes and reality.
11
We are the 7th highest, at 29%, when it comes to child poverty according to UNICEF. To promote the birth of large numbers of unwanted, unloved children at the expense of a woman’s rights and her health is unconscionable.
6
Hypocrites at work!
As long as humankind walked the planet, there was and is abortion. After hundred of years of fight, we reached societal consensus, but now this stupid debate is back!? These evangelical righteous people are mostly scary characters, gung-ho, white, diabetic and minimally educated.
Mr. President, our new Jesus is notoriously is lying through its teeth; but worshiped by his disciples. He came down from heaven of Trump Tower and freed the world of all sins, and now our poorest evangelicals can make more children of god, but feeding, upbringing and educating requires more than praying!
4
When abortions are outlawed, only rich Republicans will have abortions.
8
The largest voting block for Democrats in 2018 was the women voter. What better strategy than to silence women altogether.. This pro life position I believe is part of a much larger attack on those women voters. Back to the kitchen ladies, no one wants to hear your opinion, in fact you aren't entitled to an opinion or your right to vote.
4
Trump does not care about the unborn, but he knows what he is doing in simultaneously cementing the loyalty, and playing to the passions, of a major portion of his base.
All opposed to Trump -- irrespective of their views on abortion -- would do well to unite behind whichever candidate shows the greatest promise of winning the battleground states where the next presidential election will most likely be decided.
4
Trump has bought the loyalty of the Pro-life lobby by supporting their view. It has nothing to do with morality or religion for him. Just a shrewd political move. What the lobby doesn’t get is that their loyalty has been purchased and the price they will pay is non-negotiable and hidden. It will involve a loss of democracy and many other values essential to a progressive functioning society.
5
Democrats have empowered the anti-choice movement. I’ve been pro-choice my whole life but I’m not ok with the rhetoric now being used to be loud and proud about abortion. Until Dems can denounce late term abortions for non-medical reasons, and start talking about reducing the number of abortions as a goal, they will keep losing supporters—not only right-leaning and independents, but liberals too.
3
@Sandra If you're now not ok with women who are not ashamed of having chosen abortion, then you were never really pro choice.
2
Democrats absolutely must recognize the legitimate concerns of those who object to the haphazard, de facto abortion-on-demand landscape that followed in the wake of Roe v. Wade, leaving the U.S. with one of the least rational and least regulated abortion policies in the world. Millions of conscientious Americans who would otherwise support progressive social objectives across the board have been driven into unholy alliance with the Republican party over this issue. It's the glue that binds Catholics and Evangelicals in the Religious Right.
And frankly, Roe v. Wade was a terrible, muddled decision. The Court punted on the foundational question of the entire equation: When does human life being? Then, throwing up its hands, and in direct defiance of the law of the safer course, it declared that, with no clue whether the fetus is or is not a "human life," abortion is fine anyway. Personally, I'm not religious, and I don't think human life "begins"; it's passed on in recombined form, from iteration to iteration, in a chain that, if ever broken, ends, so that the question is personhood, not life as such--which is a given. Furthermore, even individuated life and personhood are marked by both vagueness and ambiguity, from beginning to end. Regardless, you can't have a rational policy on abortion without hammering out some understanding on these matters.
1
They are pro birth, not pro life.
11
Pander, pander, pander. Trump trolls for votes from single-issue voters. He has no personal convictions about abortion. Sadly, naïve voters will fall for his flim-flam antics.
12
Trump's support will deliver disaster to the anti-abortion movement.
5
An irrational, anti-intellectual being driven purely by primitive primordial instincts of lust, greed , power and tribalism...not surprised at all...!!
7
Ahh, the faces of young women in that crowd.
Not one of them will ever seek an abortion.
Yeah, I believe that.
13
@PhillyGirlForever:
Unsafe, illegal abortion hurts women.
Safe and legal pregnancy termination HELPS women.
4
The "pro-life" people are wearing blinders. If abortion is made illegal the woman will go to a back alley "clinic" to get an abortion by coat hanger and very well die along with the fetus.
I have some questions for these anti-abortion
people- - would you be willing to take care of an unwanted baby, raise him/her until they are 23 years old? Would you be willing to pay the cost of educating the child up to and including college? If not then you have no right to tell women what to do with their own bodies.
7
Republicans have been voting for Trump since 1980. Look at their platform of anti choice under Regan.
4
Here’s the unvarnished truth: Trump couldn’t care less one way or the other about the issue of abortion.
He turned out at this event out of what he considers to be political expediency.
How anyone familiar with Trump’s record, conduct, actions and personality could think he cares one jot about abortion is beyond me.
Trump is a fraud, a phony, a sham, a charlatan. And far too many Americans fall for it.
12
random thought (and maybe this is already a "thing") but what if, at anti-abortion rallies, adoption agencies and foster care organizations set up shop and signed up the attendees to take in children..? how many names do you think they'd get..?
8
Hypocrisy all around. Truck in these one-issue voters to distract from the impeachment proceedings. All that was missing here were the gun rights activists and the white supremacists and you would have had Carnie Fest 2020.
BTW: Shouldn’t these kids be in school instead of out telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies?
8
I have a feeling that Donald only attends and says these things for his base. I dislike him in every way possible but somehow I don’t believe he honestly is anti abortion.
And it’s really really hard for me to believe he’s never paid for one. Really hard. PB
9
You need to put Trump under oath (good luck) and ask him, point blank, how many women has he paid to abort his illegitimately-conceived fetuses?
With a history of sexual deviance like Trump’s, I would bet that there are quite a few skeletons in his closet, literally. This excuse for a man has no shame, no courage, no morals and absolutely no sense of responsibility.
INVESTIGATE - then tell me that you still want him to represent you (and have Mexico pay for his monument to narcissism).
10
I am disappointed that no Democrat bills have been offered and passed in the decades after Roe v Wade, to assure that any woman or girl can get an abortion on demand, for any reason, at public expense. Why are Democrats unwilling to promote abortion for all women? What are they afraid of?
1
And they believe he’s saying this because he means it? Ugh
8
It is over. The constitution is now a suggestion for the rule of law. This guy is Teflon coated and can do anything he wants. Get ready for four more years of this stuff.
2
Trump will do anything for attention (and a vote).
2
A brilliant move by Trump to lock up the evangelical vote. I just finished reading a Wikipedia article on fascism. The similarities are truly frightening.
3
So, if the President wants to reduce abortions, why penalize California for opting to include birth control in its' state insurance requirements?
5
@Edward B. because allowing women to use birth control to prevent abortions when they do not want to continue a pregnancy allows women agency and reproductive freedom and the christian right can't allow that
5
So Trump takes health insurance away from women, food stamps from children, relaxes health standards for air and water that will sicken thousands, traumatizes immigrant children and families, risks the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iranians by inciting war, yet somehow, he’s pro- life? This makes no sense.
17
I thought America supported people's right to self determination. The country will be divided in reality if the basic right to Abortion is restriction. You will see. We will crush the Republicans in 2020. And if not, we will work to destroy America as a union. I refuse to fund a repugnant agenda.
5
fully agreed. am with you. there’s no union worth saving here, lives are at stake.
1
So sorry for many of the comments posted! How many of those who brought up the past life of Trump could stand because they are so pure? No one! The sad fact is that life in the womb is not valued. It is disposable. Our law supports that and if Roe versus Wade were heard today it would never pass because we can prove that the 'tissue' in the womb is a human being. The hatred towards Trump is an ugly mirror of the person spewing forth angry comments online. To me President Trump is the greatest president in my lifetime...his speech today was witnessed by the God.Many of the haters reject that God because they think they are God.
3
Donald Trump and those who support him at this gathering—all anti-abortion but nevertheless certainly not pro life
5
Long before Roe, women with access and means had safe, legal abortions - and no matter the status of Roe, those women will always have safe, legal abortions - overturning Roe will not result in the birth of more white babies to middle and upper income women. #probirthcontrol
6
Schilling for votes. Straight into your uterus.
8
Trump is clearly using these dangerous true-believers for his own politicial gain. . . wait, where have I heard that before?
3
Is this the last act of A Desparate Man?
2
The pro-choice arguments are all over the place, beginning with the ‘pro-choice’ label that just evades the moral issue that is being contested. Whataboutism characterizes most of them: what about education, healthcare, sex education, women’s rights, women’s health, rape, men’s responsibilities, war, climate change, DJT’s personal hypocrisy and duplicity . . . None of those make for effective counter arguments against the pro-life argument which is that the fetus is a person who deserves rights. And those that attempt to are really crazy. ‘I’m not responsible for becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. It is just my body doing something’? What? The pro-choice movement really is in a lot of trouble.
3
@Thomas so when does life begin? At conception? What about all the embryos that never implant or fail to develop? What about frozen embryos that aren’t implanted?
5
@Thomas, persons have already been born. Rights accrue at birth, not before.
5
@Thomas
You’ve already been told, by me, that a fetus doesn’t have the right to a woman’s body, even if we assume your unproven assertion that it’s a person.
Care to try a response to that argument?
Women aren’t responsible for the fact that mammalian reproduction happens the way it does. I understand that men like you like to blame women for anything and everything, but it doesn’t work here. Women don’t trade in their right to self determination just because they have sex. PS- most women use contraception. But I assume that it’s still our fault when that fails no matter what, right?
5
His supporters are pro-birth, not pro-life. He's just pro-Trump.
13
He is certainly a "stonger" supporter than Ronald Reagan who gave good rhetoric but no results except decimating UN birth control funding. He cut those funds enough to impact world population growth.
1
The advantage of the anti-abortion camp is their language is more emotionally charged. “Stop killing babies” is a more effective battle cry than arguing over nuances of what counts as life, viability...At the end of the day for most people emotions overpower cold logic.
7
Mr. Trump's motives for whatever he tells anyone about anything are completely self-serving for him and him alone. He will say anything necessary to "get the vote" and will say the opposite to anyone else if that is what it takes to get another vote.
Anyone who believes differently about Mr. Trump, that he might be capably of any kind of sincerity, is sadly mistaken. he's simply not capable of it.
15
'But at the march, it was Mr. Trump’s mere presence, more than any of his promises or his ominous warnings, that was cause for excitement.'
To me, Donald Trump's mere presence is repugnant. Unfortunately, he will almost certainly be re-elected.
13
“Roy Hagemyer, 62, a pastor from Mohave Valley, Ariz., who was standing at the corner of 15th Street and Constitution Avenue and handing out signs reading, “Human Rights Begin in the Womb,” could barely contain his excitement before Mr. Trump’s speech.”
Yes, it’s so simple isn’t it? If human rights truly being in the womb, and they truly care about the life of the unborn cells/fetus, I suggest that “pro-lifers” put their money where their mouth is.
These “small government” conservatives should mandate that:
1. All males who father a child that results in an unwanted pregnancy will be responsible for the physical and financial well-being of the child until, said child, reaches the age of 18
2. All individuals who identify as “Pro-Life” will register their names into a database to adopt a child that is the result of an unwanted pregnancy
3. All individuals who identify as “Pro-Life” will physically and financially care for a disadvantaged child who is born into circumstances beyond their control
Since the answer to abolishing abortions and honoring the sanctity of life has been this simple, I'm surprised Pro-Lifers haven't offered this solution sooner.
38
@PeaceForAll Pro Lifers don't care about the child once it is born. Everyone knows that.
4
Where can I sign up?
There’s no reason to believe a man who says that he’s the greatest protector of unborn children when he is fine with caging living children, separating them from their families, and subjecting them to traumatic abuse on a daily basis. It just shows that for Trump, talk is cheap.
The militant pro-birth movement has signed a Faustian pact with Trump and got itself played. And so goes any shred of credibility or moral authority.
20
@Richard Grijalva Talk is cheap for Mr. Trump; he'll say anything that anyone wants to hear; that feeds his fragile ego. Don't waste your breath debating the abortion/anti-abortion issue; it makes no difference to him what you think. The only thing he's interested in is your vote and your misguided notion that he has any understanding of what you're talking about.
The irony here is that with all of the alleged philandering that Mr. Trump has done (whether or not wanted by some of those women), he's no doubt had moments of panic that one of his illicit lovers might become pregnant with his child--then, I wonder, what would he have to say about abortion being illegal.
Of course, I forget! At a time when abortion was legally kept unavailable to most women, that is, prior to 1973, wealthy women could still make secret, private arrangements to safely terminate their unwanted pregnancies. Wealth could always protect these women's lives.
So, really, another irony here: Mr. Trump doesn't know anything about the real world of abortion.
18
@Cate Perhaps he's quite familiar with the "real world of abortion," but simply doesn't care. He'd send one of his henchman to "take care of the problem" so he can go back to doing what he does best: serving himself at the expense of others.
6
"Right to life" until you're born. Then you're on your own.
28
UH of NJ,
I have participated in pro life vigils in downtown Manhattan across the street from Planned Parenthood and have been subjected to some of the most vile and vulgar comments from pro abortion people. I have even been pushed and spit upon by these people. They are some of the most vicious people I have ever encountered. The pro life people now have a police presence to stop these atrocities. It is the pro abortion crowd who give us trouble.
7
@KMW
Nothing more vicious than a person who thinks a woman doesn’t have the right to decide who uses her body. In other contexts we call those people rapists.
17
I have an idea. You should personally choose to never have an abortion. You should hope that these people you talk about don’t get between you and your health care. Don’t you dare generalize about the millions and millions of Americans who would prefer no one ever had to have an abortion but defend a Woman’s right to her personal health care choices. Go out and spend your time fighting for health care access, food, shelter for so, so many children in need. And while you’re at it, go fight for more gun control measures that protect our living children. But all of that is way too difficult for you, it is so easy to block a heath care facility and exaggerate your experiences.
7
That’s unfortunate and I am so sorry you have experienced that. I’m not aware of any “pro-abortion” people, though, and I wonder who they are? I know of many pro-choice people, but not a single one is “pro-abortion.”
5
Thanks to all who continue to work to support the full spectrum of reproductive care. If you're pro-choice and worried about what lies ahead, consider donating to one of the many amazing groups that make abortion care more accessible and affordable. The National Network of Abortion Funds is a great place to start.
17
My body. My choice. Not any government decision.
39
@Oh My
Correction: "My body. My baby's body..."
2
Astonishing that a woman’s right to reproductive freedom is still an issue in a supposedly mature democracy.
37
And people laughed at the idea of Gilead in "The Handmaid's Tale". It's closer than you think.
23
So much for separation of church and state.
35
In this life, abortions have likely been one of the few services he has probably actually paid for in full.
40
Trump is a “ believer and biggest supporter “ of anything that gets him elected. He was pro choice until he was running for presidency now he doesn’t really know what to believe til Someone tells him what will get him elected or re-elected. Hence the
Oft changing narratives previously known as flip-flopping
23
Any government that can force you to have a child, can force you not to have one (see China). Be careful what you wish for and what rights you're willing to give away.
26
@Jerry Sturdivant
Terrible argument. No one, not a single person is advocating forced abortions.
5
@Max Deitenbeck
You don’t get it. He’s saying that the same fundamental right that protects the right to abortion protects your right to become or stay pregnant.
There are people who advocate for forced abortions, forced c sections, and forced sterilization.
I for one think that if abortion is banned than all men should be forcibly sterilized after a sperm sample is collected so they can father children later. That would reduce unwanted pregnancy now wouldn’t it? Surely you shouldn’t have an issue that, Max?
7
"Pro-Life" and "March for Life," slogans adopted by those opposed to abortion, are offensive. Whose life do they mean to protect? If a woman must bear a child whether she can support it, educate it, give it a life worth living while still having a chance at a decent life for herself, whose is getting to live? If a woman will die in the process of giving birth, how is that pro-life?
The planet is bursting at the seams, with homeless people living on the streets in every city in America. We need not fear that our species will die off. This is not the Middle Ages, and we could be heading into a Dark Ages if we continue to be so irresponsible as to insist that every pregnancy must result in the birth of yet another baby.
And the greatest fraud is that the people who shout the loudest and who crowd these militant marches have no intention whatever of doing anything at all to care for any of the babies they claim to be protecting.
Abortions are never an easy choice, nor are they an easy procedure to endure, but all women should have the right to decide whether they can or should have a baby.
33
Yes. And we really do not need unbridled procreation. Too many people have children that shouldn’t for numerous reasons. Especially those that cannot provide for them or raise them appropriately.
4
1. Trump announced plans to withhold federal money from California if it did not drop a requirement that private insurers cover abortions.
I just don't see how we allow federal funds to be withheld for a LEGAL medical procedure.
2. Oh yes, Mr. Trump, please tell us more about the "sanctity of life" as you make cuts to programs that feed children, put put poor nutrition back in schools, make plans to reduce Social Security, Medicare and Disability payments and bully, insult and punish anyone who disagrees with your wanna-be- dictator-tough-guy posturing.
It makes my stomach churn.
29
I thought people like Trump hated the idea of minorities and immigrants having more kids. So now he actually does want them to have more children? He should really make up his mind.
20
Trump has never been against minority citizens or those persons who are in the US legally. Please provide a quote or news source that confirms otherwise.
Any bets as to how many abortions trump has personally paid for?
He's a hypocrite of the first order, trumpers.
And for fun, here's trump on who invented the wheel (from a Wednesday interview in Davos):
"I was worried about him [Elon Musk], because he’s one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said of Musk. “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the light bulb, and the wheel and all of these things.”
18
Trump's pro-life stance is the only reason Evangelicals support him. We understand what he is. But nothing he has done is worse than the abortion of an unborn child.
6
@Jeff
If you really truly believe that then there's no arguing with you. I, and many decent minded people, reject the dishonesty, hypocrisy and callousness within your statement.
3
@Jeff I take it that the deaths of young children separated from their parents at the southern border don't count, then, according to your oh-so-moral "pro-life" code? Those would be real, living, existing children, by the way, not your imaginary unrealized "unborn children" that cannot be distinguished from any other clump of undifferentiated cells.
4
This story lacks information about the number of Trump supporters and Republicans who have had abortions, if such information is available.
19
@Jackson Aramis
Sure. And let's find out how many people who are against drunk driving have DUIs in their pasts, because things aren't wrong is people who oppose them themselves have done them. Very mature reasoning.
Look at those signs. The vulgarity, the crudeness. Pro-life my foot.
17
Rarely has trumpian hypocrisy reached such heights. And to those who argue that sinners can and, sometimes, do repent, I say "Trump is no St-Paul" and Washington DC does not look like Damascus to me (for fun, just ask DT to spot Damascus on a map).
11
It is a sad commentary about the decay in America's democracy that allows a person with autocratic and despotic tendencies and behaviors to maintain significant public support because he hands out goodies to each of the special interest subgroups within his base of support, and these subgroups sadly fail to notice the cause of the general decline of our republic.
20
The frustrating mis information some of these people circulate equates birth control with abortion. Less than 10% of planned parenthood's budget is for abortion. Are these people also against birth control?
Making safe, legal, birth control available reduces the need for abortion. In states which make birth control difficult there has been an increase in abortion, especially among the poor.
I went to a public high school which educated students about sex in order to prepare us and reduce unintended pregnancy.
In many 'christian' school districts, sex education is avoided, the stated reason is that this encourages premarital sex.
Humans are sexually mature by the early teens. In the past century as people go to high school and college, we are often not ready to be parents until the early or mid twenties.
Our bodies don't know it.
14
There will always be abortions. The question is whether they should be done by experienced medical personnel or done in a back alley or seedy hotel. Women deserve choice and they deserve the best of medical care.
24
all this makes me wonder if we are one step closer to the slippery slope where a few religious zealots and extremists will have more influence about how the constitution is interpreted. trump has spent the last 3 years packing the courts with unqualified hard core conservative (and i use the term loosely) judges. we're one step closer to the very thing the pilgrims fled europe to escape.
17
By throwing his ideological weight into the abortion issue, Trump shows his unwillingness to be the president of all Americans, over 60% of whom support abortion in some form. This merely to assure a small portion of hard core votes from people who would have voted for him anyway.
8
These people are not "pro-life," they are "pro-birth." Once these babies are born, they are on their own. The people who have blocked access to birth control and abortion aren't going to pay a cent for their support.
One of these is the president. We know from women who have had affairs with Trump that he refuses to use condoms. I wonder how many of their abortions he has paid for?
31
@JA I am not "Pro Life", which is just a mushy political slogan. I am Pro Justice. Find me an unborn baby who has murdered anybody and I'll approve of abortion.
Trump's only defense against impeachment is that the House Democrats just don't like him.
He then resorts to every bell & whistle trick, desperate to mobilize voters who would 'like' him. He has cancelled environmental protections, stood up against choice and promises more tax cuts.
That's his base: 3 one issue voter blocks.
(The immigration purge has faded as a hot issue.)
Is that what will define America now?
14
Now if only these self-proclaimed pro-lifers cared about the children in cages. Or those the Repubs are trying to throw off health care coverage. Or those killed, maimed or traumatized by gun violence. And on and on. The evangelicals have exposed their true selves. It's not about truth, humility and service to others. It's not about love of anything. And they've got bigger problems than just one issue; they've sold their souls. Good luck with that.
29
He's trying to get the vote, these church going conservatives folks show up in large numbers and vote. wish more democrats actually voted.
7
There is not one Democratic presidential candidate who is pro life. They all support abortion and most support abortion on demand. This is outrageous. You can even count on one hand how many Democratic politicians take a pro life position. Pro life voters are not welcomed in the Democratic Party and why many have switched their party affiliation. This issue is that important to them and more are leaning towards pro life. The Democrats are making a grave error by not embracing the pro life movement. They better wake up before even more walk away.
8
Being pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. It means staying out of another woman’s right to choose and allowing her to make the best private, medical decision for herself.
26
@KMW, what is a "grave error" is the effort of anti-American enemies of the Constitution in attempting to forcibly strip away the sacred rights of innocent citizens to the protections of the 14th Amendment. And those who are actually pro-life, in the most honest sense of the term, are the Democrats. I will never "embrace" those who consider women to be nothing but livestock and chattel property.
15
@KMW
sadly, you miss the point. i know many "pro life" democrats, they just reject the notion that somebody can force their beliefs on another by using the force of law.
9
Love the title of the article. Why doesn't he care about the children who are already born? Those whose parents are struggling to feed them or those who want to go to college and not be in debt forever or those who go to schools that are falling down or those who he separated from their parents and remain separated to this day. He cares for nobody but himself.
21
That DT has paid for abortions in the past is pretty much a sure thing. I just wish some of the women involved would come out about it. I also understand their reluctance to do so, for any number of easons. Yet, just one or two....
21
Machiavellianism at its very finest. Trump is singular in his purpose: "to win" and to promote the values of his and his cronies in order to preserve the status quo and to further fatten their coffers. It is truly shameful. Every American who cares about our democracy and the Freedoms for which this country has always been lauded, should be afraid. And vocal. And voting. And voicing their objections to this administration. Our America is under attack! The United States of America that we love and that honors freedom and diversity and allows individuals a voice and a chance is under siege. We must object. We must speak out. We just unify and VOTE!
10
@Steve Fankuchen, You want to know what I learned from evangelicals? They make up nearly 25% of the population. They are the largest demographic of voters. If I wanted to TARGET a single group (because I didn’t have anything else to tout) I would target evangelicals. It’s what they call in business, “low hanging fruit”. We need actual leadership in this country, not this pandering.
13
Trump is using a blatant appeal to emotion--shouting provocative epithets and offering no logical arguments.
The issue of late-term abortions is philosophically interesting, though. The 8-month fetus is not so radically different from a new born baby that it should be denied rights that the newborn has.
There are different arguments for late term abortions that are therapeutic, necessary to save the mother's health or life.
4
What these protesters don’t understand is that in some areas Planned Parenthood is the only prenatal provider for low income women.
22
@Gerry they may understand that, they just don't care about the health of the mother to be or the future baby. They only care about controlling women and forcing them to abide by their religious patriarchal world view.
4
Never more true than now. If you don’t like abortions, don’t have one. Support free, confidential, universal family planning services and sex education so abortions are rare. But no matter what, you don’t get to tell other people what to do with their bodies. Especially if you also resist paying for the birth and care of kids you insist should be born from prenatal to 18. You don’t get to have it both ways.
28
It is really past time that the fanatical Evangelical leaders are revealed to be the "actors" they are. They are continually being used by politicians who dangle the abortion debate in front of them like a carrot. If the Evangelicals had as much zeal for pacifism as they do for controlling women's bodies, some of this might make sense. But for now, it makes no sense other than hatred of women, so easily stirred up for amoral politicians to gain power.
14
If churches paid taxes like the rest of us, we could fund Planned Parenthood , affordable housing, and a host of other worthy community projects. As it is, these uncollected taxes are funding political campaigns and private airplanes.
47
What we need to do is reframe abortion on the left. Make Illigal the conditions that CAUSE abortion: inequality, lack of access to sex education/ contraceptives. Investing in all of this will make abortion much less frequent. That is where the left needs to focus.
The left needs to clearly express that they are not pro abortion but rather want to protect it as a last extreme measure available and sympathy to women caught in such a position.
Donald Trump says he is for human life. But he is undoing every single protection for the natural environment that is the source of health and well-being for children now and in the future. 
The left needs to reclaim the word conservative. To conserve is to conserve resources that support life on planet earth. To conserve is to conserve life of humans of all ages, And yes proactively making sure in advance that children that are conceived are planned for and wanted.
15
Catholic high schools make this demonstration a yearly field trip - the kids have a grand time and get free hats with fetus footprints on them while they visit the nation's capital.
If someday faced with an unplanned pregnancy, I wonder if they will remember advocating against an individual woman's right to control her reproductive choices.
27
Got to wonder how many unplanned pregnancies were the result of those high school field trips to DC...
22
@Tim Good one, Tim. And that includes the teachers.
2
I agree with all the anti-abortion sentiments that a minority of Americans voice and that their minority-elected president now supports. They should under no circumstances be forced or coerced into having such a medical procedure. On the other hand, however, their medical decisions ought have no bearing whatsoever on the majority of Americans who wish to stay in possession of their right to make medical decisions for themselves.
17
I’m in DC (most decidedly NOT for this) and it is frightening to see the people attending the march. Lots of school students and children with teachers (catholic schools mostly) and parents. Young kids who probably don’t have the chance or ability to think it through.
Trump doesn’t care one whit for life except for his own.
26
@Kate, the amoral exploitation of children, in a vicious anti-American crusade to strip innocent citizens of their guaranteed rights to the protections of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, is indeed frightening to see. And the Roman Catholic Church, the main instigator of this annual hate march, has an established track record of amoral exploitation of children for millennia now.
3
Would someone with Trump's proclivities for infidelity, paying women for sex, divorcing when a younger model comes along, etc., i.e., a general lack of moral substance, balk at also funding abortions? I seriously doubt it; but, he will make promises for votes that if fulfilled will ruin a lot of women's lives - for a while. Eventually, sanity will prevail and women will be ensured the right to govern decisions about their bodies. I'm sorry for the women who happen to fall victim to the sorry excuse for a human being.
23
I would like to know how many of Trump's sexual affairs over his lifetime ended in abortion. Can't imagine he ever worried about using birth control.
I'm pro safe and legal abortions. I'm pleased that as I type these words, thousands of women, in the privacy of their medical facilities, are receiving private, safe, legal abortions.
And no, I don't fear hell's fire for my stance.
I'm just curious about when, and how, "pro-lifers" are going to interfere with, harass, and convict wealthy women and their physicians, if abortions are rendered illegal again.
I'd buy a ticket to see that.
18
@Jung and Easily Freudened They're going after the low-hanging fruit first: poor women. When they prevent such women from obtaining safe, legal abortions, they'll go after the more difficult cases. Perhaps forcing women of child-bearing ago in red states to undergo pregnancy tests before crossing state lines, whether driving or flying.
4
Trumpism is defined by lying and fear-mongering. His base is happy to think what they will, regardless of the facts.
9
Doesn’t affect him so why would he care. He is rich. If he wanted an abortion he would get one. After all the rules don’t apply to people if wealth like Trump.
10
I would just like to see Hagermyer and his band of busy bodies outlaw abortion. There will be a backlash and a revolution in this country like he can't imagine. We will never surrender our rights to a bunch of religious zealots who care about no one but themselves and who think they have the right to tell the rest of us how to behave. This is America, land of the free.
23
I would love to see Democrats point to all of the bills they have introduced in Congress to assure that any woman or girl can get an abortion on demand.
Trump doesn't really like people, women specifically. He certainly doesn't respect life.
35
Take a look at the Republican Party platform. Once upon a time it included exceptions for rape, incest, and the life and health of the mother. Now, they would outlaw all abortion, without exception. They have become extremists: only pro-life as far as fertilized eggs and fetuses, but not when it comes to daughters, sisters and wives that are already part of the fabric of our lives.
That is, they are not pro-life when it comes to poor, black and brown daughter, sisters, and wives; the precious white women in Republicans' lives will always be able to get a safe and legal abortion if need be.
24
I’m sure it is lost on this crowd that Trump executed a foreign general and nine other people in cold blood just a few weeks ago. Don’t know how that jibes with a pro-life platform.
25
This is their only cause to vote GOP. They may be educated, employed, broke, uninformed, uneducated, on drugs, opioid out, drug free, jobless, unskilled, but, as long as they are pro-life, they are voting for the GOP regardless of how the GOP policies continue to harm them and are anti-family. Just imagine what freedom you will have if they continue to govern your state and this nation. They will outlaw your rights but hold on to their rights such as pro-life laws and guns. People, you better wake up. They will not stop with abortion. They will silence your right to speak out against and to take actions on your personhood.
15
Making abortion illegal or unavailable will not stop abortions.
It has been for the ages,.
It will set women back to days of the alley and kitchen table. Many, many lost their lives. The majority of men who fathered these unborn paid no comparable price.
The rate of abortion is in decline due to more effective birth control. It should be available to all. That is what we should be working for. No one "likes" abortion as Repubs define Democrats, who actually do more to prevent abortion in health care for all initiatives.
The Catholic Church forbids contraception, rails against abortion. Incomprehensible.
25
Wonder how many abortions Trump has paid for - or more probably, *said* he’d pay for.
But the anti-abortion brigade doesn’t care about that, about Trump’s hypocrisy, about his lack of leadership and honest inspiration on this or any other topic. Only that they get their political agenda across.
Soulless, godless, cynical manipulators of our society. TAKE AWAY THEIR TAX EXEMPTIONS.
28
I sadly now feel a Civil War on the rise
13
Yes. divide and conquer. What better way than to bring about a totalitarian state by creating civil unrest amongst its citizens. Trump has been greasing that pump his entire Presidency with his derogatory remarks.
12
@Mixilplix . “Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.” Abraham Lincoln, 2nd inaugural address to the nation, 1865
Religion is divisive and should be private. Our constitution built a wall between church and state for a very good reason.
It's ironic that we fought for constitutional democracies in theocratic states, yet the U.S. is in danger of becoming an autocratic theocracy itself.
12
@Mixilplix
Why? I thought we valued life, even believe it is sacred?
It's really consistent with Trumps character. The emergent solution would in fact be : medical tourism for the rich and coat hangers for the poor.
Prior to Roe vs Wade, the pro-life movement, if there was one, did not worry about back alley abortions that put the women in great danger, and being poor they certainly didn't trouble Trump's conscience. But availability of safe abortions afterward became a cause for alarm (pro-life?????).
The better off pregnant women have the medical tourism option. Go to a country that has safe legal abortions. Certainly something that would not trouble hotelier Trump's conscience.
16
@sherm: Enjoyed your comment here! Might I add that women who had the money usually had connections to doctors right here in the U.S. and didn't even need to seek help in another country--money talks.
7
Trump kidnaps and tortures children but yet these anti choice people will vote for him anyway. Once I see them protecting the treatment of alive children, I might believe that they actually care for human beings and this isn't just a way to have power and control over others.
19
If there was ever a family that should have used some form of birth control, it was Trump's parents.
45
I know it’s accepted shorthand to say Roe v. Wade “legalized” abortion and a future SCOTUS overturning Roe would make abortion “illegal”. But let’s remember the Texas law challenged in Roe — and determined to be unconstitutional — made it a crime to procure or attempt an abortion except for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A crime subject to prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of both the mother and her physician! Is that what the so-called “pro-life” advocates want? They want the heavy hand of the state to police and prosecute women and their health care providers for personal and often heart-wrenching decisions to terminate some pregnancies. Doesn’t sound very life affirming or Christ-like love of others to me.
17
@Ben
When do you think an abortion is justified?
1
60% of people under 30yo support Trump's removal.
So he has some work to do outside the fundamentalist base.
I hope someone is taking up some cash for the youngsters who will need therapy the rest of their lives living in Trump's camps at the border. Someone pass the hat for humans larger than a sesame seed.
17
I’m sure when trump and his republican friends get what they want, no more abortions, they will be adopting all the little babies. What a farce this group is. This country under Trump is going backward and faster then I ever imagined. But the people will vote for this guy who will take away social security, Medicare
And Medicaid so the rich will have their tax breaks. When will this horror end.
24
Not worthy of "insightful" comment. He played to his base. The only difference that between now and then is the circumstances of impeachment. He made it a point to "harden their hearts. " ---personally.
5
wealthy women will continue to have reproductive freedom which is the fundamental
Civil right for women but poor and young women will not
16
Mr. Trump appears to have omitted in his latest rally, the condition of lost children now incarcerated in America. If he condones the separation of toddlers from their family, then we may be seeing a self-proclaimed president deemed God in the eyes of these fighting holy evangelicals. The brutal love of God should never be underestimated, and since the president did not disappoint, he might wish to give a new testament on the compassion of Our Lord.
2
Personally, some on the Religious Right find him reprehensible. But, they made a deal with the devil. They've sold their souls to him for The Supreme Court. He has delivered. Whether he's reelected or not, we will be dealing the fall-out of this for decades.
15
The abortion issue is unsolvable.
The reality is that majorities in Southern, Plains and most of the Rocky Mountain states are against abortion. At the same time, majorities in the left leaning and moderate states are pro choice.
I would prefer that this issue gets tossed back to the states. If conservative states want a bunch of uneducated and underfunded kids and the women that reside in these states are ok as second class citizens....fine let’s move on. I don’t live there. Again, women in these states are openly supportive of restricting choice.
This abortion issue, and the resulting politics, holds back just about every other issue on the national agenda and subjects is to politicians that are narrow minded and incompetent.
7
@Practical Thoughts
This should have always been up to the states. There is no reason why California values should be imposed on Oklahoma or vice versa.
2
@Practical Thoughts and @Ian, NO innocent woman should be forced to be a nomad in order to access one of the most fundamental of human rights - the right to personal bodily autonomy. The right to safe and legal pregnancy termination MUST remain a national, and Constitutional, right.
9
oh if only the majority of Americans whom didn't vote for him would boycott/ protest and at sit home for just 1 month. The tides would turn.
4
He has to keep the base riled up. They're all he has.
11
Unfortunately, pro-choice Americans, and their leaders, continue to bungle the issue by speaking about this in terms of “health care choices.” That’s a pathetically weak argument compared to “abortion is murder.”
Before it’s too late, we need to reframe the other side as more than “anti-choice,” and something considerably more sinister than “pro-life.” They are pro-forced birth. The issue is whether women will be forced to become state property and citizens without rights for as long as they are pregnant. Ultimately, the flip side of “pro-life” is being pro-slavery, pro-forced incubation, pro-forced birth, pro-child trafficking. We need to use these words, because if we lose a woman’s right to control her body, these words will be the daily reality for every woman of childbearing age.
18
@CL — The problem comes when marketeers get involved covering the truth up in every direction.
1
Please. If the anti-abortion crowd were logically consistent, they would spend as much energy on the rights of children already born and whom, among other circumstances, are suffering imprisonment at our border, if they happen to be migrants; poverty, if they happen to be born into many impoverished American families; and inadequate medical care as part and parcel of the above.
19
Just last week Trump lamented that the 2nd amendment was in jeopardy. He, his syncopates in Congress, and his cult followers could care less if there is another Columbine, Parkland or Sandy Hook and children, from kindergarten through high school are slaughtered. Their lives and subsequent deaths mean nothing ti these people. Yet somehow they try to lay claim to the moral high ground, saying that every life is sacred.
These are also the same folks whose daughters, sisters, or even they themselves somehow find their way into a clinic for an abortion, saying they’re different than the other women there, that their abortion is necessary unlike the others. The next day they’re back to carrying their “pro life” signs. Their hypocrisy is boundless.
25
@Miriam
Guns don't kill, people do.
1
Those who are against abortion have a very strong argument.
These people believe human life begins at conception, and purposefully ending a pregnancy at any stage is murder.
This is not a silly idea. If a fertilized egg is cared for and nurtured, it will likely grow to become an adult human. The embryo is simply a very early stage in the life of a human.
It's not impossible, but it is difficult to justify murder.
9
@Raz
"These people believe human life begins at conception, and purposefully ending a pregnancy at any stage is murder."
Well, this doesn't mean that they - or you - are right.
14
@Raz
Yet so many look away from children after they are born. They rally behind gov't that stirs up violence (hurting mothers and children) and they turn away as their President systematically asks border guards to steal children out of their parent's arms.
This hypocrisy is sickening and more and more people are turning away from Christianity because of it.
7
@Raz
Wrong. No one has the right to use a woman’s body, even if it needs to to sustain its life. Therefore she has every right to remove it and its death isn’t “murder.”
Also, why use language like “cared for and nurtured” to describe the process of gestation? Ludicrous, maudlin language. A blastocyst burrowing into my endometrium and interfering with my immune system, then causing vaginal tears on its way out is more accurate.
6
A sure way to keep the base distracted from the evidence the Dems have found ways to get before the public. And to undermine the argument made by thoughtful, principled, follow-Christ's-example and honor the spirit-of-the-law Evangelicals in December.
All that aside, it's hard to imagine people supporting Trump on this issue as being committed to a comprehensive support of life, since their hero is hurrying along the wholesale degradation of the environment, exacerbating income inequality that compromises the vast majority's ability to realize its talents in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, and cultivating a cynicism that undermines any hope of a recovered civic or civil life.
Given their commitment to imposing the limitations of their beliefs on everyone, I suppose it's not surprising that they find it possible to support, even celebrate a leader who claims the kind of power that's used by dictators (power-over used to impose conditions and limitations of thought and behavior on others and to relieve them of the burden of exercising the power to choose as individuals with moral agency). So much for their patriotism, if patriotism means supporting the idea and ideals of American democracy.
It seems like the tyranny of the minority will continue, thanks to the shallow political savvy, narcissistic cunning, gross amorality, unifying greed, and deep pockets of Trump's clients, this GOP and its patrons--and their nauseatingly arrogant and ignorant figurehead.
11
US - 21st Century? And people actually believe they have a right to meddle in other's private lives; force everyone to believe what they believe; do as they mandate upon pain of punishment; and create a de-facto evangelical theocracy to replace democratic ideals and freedom. I can think of more than a few other religions that these same people castigate, hate, want disappeared from the face of the earth for exactly the same kind of extremism, denigrating them as uncivilized, inhuman, inhumane, stone-age.
25
Can anyone explain to me how someone can be "pro-life" while at the same time be "pro-gun" despite the fact that it results in the violent death of so many young innocent people in mass shootings in schools etc. Once born we don't care about the life of kids anymore, is that it? Makes no logical, emotional or spiritual sense at all. Is there an explanation? A warped logic behind this madness?
37
It is clear to me that the most powerful arm of the anti-abortion movement would like to prevent women from controlling their own reproduction. That is truly the best way to eliminate women as a collective threat to the economic, social and political power than men have historically enjoyed virtually unchallenged. If women have to worry about sex leading to unplanned pregnancy then the burden of childbearing and rape prevention is once again solely upon women. Being a “good girl” or suffering the consequences becomes the stick that keeps women in line.
As others have pointed out, if the powerful people in this movement really cared about the life of the unborn there would be far more emphasis on health care, education, affordable housing and nutrition. In fact, under Trump those programs are being decimated. This “pro-life” movement is pure hypocrisy and surely shameful to those who really do believe that every life is sacred. Trump takes the Lord’s name in vain by attending this event. Surely true Christians realize this.
27
Why any conservative with principles would wish for the government to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term that she clearly does not want is beyond me. Given that people vehemently disagree on this issue, in a free society the government must remain neutral and allow women to make this moral judgement for themselves.
23
You know, perhaps a fetus, regardless of its stage of development, IS a person with rights that must be considered. But so is the mother. And so, for me this debate comes down to this: whose life is more valuable? The life that's been lived for 20, 30, 40 years already? The one with family, friends, a job, memories, and experiences, or the one who has yet to breathe their first breath, the one who hasn't formed the ability to even STORE memories let alone make them? An abortion may involve taking a life, but making it illegal (or even difficult, or expensive) to obtain one can mean ruining lives already lived and derail life courses already set. Maybe it sounds coldly calculating to weigh one life against another in this way, but that's the moral calculus here, and I'm not ashamed to stand on the side of a full, existing human life rather than the potentiality of one.
24
A powerful line in the sand position by a moderate Democrat would make swing states very much likely to go Blue in 2020. Instead we get nothing but defense of late term abortions and blanket statements about women's rights to their bodies. I lie Pete B's approach which is to clearly define the guardrails on early abortion restrictions and late abortion fetal rights. Insist you are going to come in and use the court appointees to fight every restrictive law before 24 weeks in every state.Repeat them consistently and often and virtually every moderate voter will support it.
3
Trump has never stood for anything except himself. He's just a mirror reflecting back whatever he sees as most benefiting him. He tweets comments to see how many cheer and then adjusts his "position" accordingly ( most recently how "open" he is to cutting Social Security. ) This mirror reflection also reveals the utterly transactional nature of this group of followers who engage in all manner of ethical contortions to claim him as their champion. It is sad to see that need to dismiss the damage he is doing to so many others in order to uphold the righteousness of this view. The fear of those on the extremes works to keep the rest of us apart. And that is trump's best skill.
13
I'm just relieved this will never be a debate in Canada. Women have the right to make the extremely difficult decision of whether to abort or not. Because it's their lives. Government implying that they know "what's best" especially when it's politically/religiously fueled and about something so personal is terrifying.
And Trump was pro-choice in a past life no?
What a nightmare.
24
@Brandon Y Oui, c'est un cauchemar. You have no idea. I wish I had emigrated to Canada in my youth when the option was still available.
3
What about children that HAVE been born and need healthcare, clean environment and investment in education and infrastructure?
24
America is neither so pro-choice as the far left would like, nor as pro-life as the far right would like. Most of the country inhabits the messy center. If those on the left and right would acknowledge that fact, and acknowledge that those who hold different points of view are not evil but only wrong, this comments section would be a whole lot less vitriolic.
2
What you have just described is the right to choose.
1
@Snowball It is not just different points of view . That might have been the case decades ago when people understood and respected the constitution, but religion has been formally weaponized by the Republican Party in order to gain and maintain power. It is about so much more than abortion.
"... Project Blitz is part of a full-frontal assault by Christian nationalists to force a narrow set of religious beliefs into our shared secular laws." See Au.org for more information. Also FFRF.org
1
@Snowball, if someone believes that my sacred civil, human, and Constitutional rights to the protection of the 14th Amendment should be forcibly stripped away from me and all other innocent women, THEY ARE EVIL.
1
The idea that in the 21st Century a democracy would ban abortions is ludicrous. The lessons of Prohibition must have been forgotten.
Will all the women who have had abortions since the Roe vs Wade decision, and the doctors who performed the procedures be considered criminals?
Women are not machines for making babies. and a fertilised ovum or a foetus is not a human being. There is no biblical passage that says otherwise.
14
As if he'd have the slightest objection to rich women having one, or he'd never been in the neighborhood of one himself.
35
Ah, but toxins in the water their precious babes drink. No concern about that or others.
46
Hey men who are pro forced birth: how about getting a vasectomy at birth or prior to puberty? Problem solved.
Stay out of my reproductive decisions!
Signed,
A 53 year old woman with two children and one grandchild.
51
@Sue Salvesen all those anti choice men out there- wear a condom or abstain. No woman needs an abortion who isn’t pregnant so do your part - wear a condom or get a vasectomy.
1
The strongest argument I can think of for supporting abortion rights is Donald Trump himself.
62
@Chicago Guy
Yes! (Retroactively).
Trumps cruelty is the feature not the bug. It is intentional, it is purposeful, it is his way of dividing the spoils. If he were president at the end of WWII there would have been hangings in the sports arenas -trump is like the taliban without the burkas - for now
27
Opportunistic, fear-mongering Trump at it again. Anyone with half a brain knows he latches onto this issue to guarantee a flock of single-issue voter support. He couldn’t care less if a woman gets an abortion or not. Bring it up at the trial as further evidence of self-interest.
21
Anti-abortion? No. Anti-Choice.
19
With Trump and these folks, why does the “right to life” end precisely at birth?
35
These protesters are themselves the best argument for abortion.
21
@Abe And taxing the churches.
"My first priority is myself. Standards, rules, even laws are obstacles, not constraints. And people want to watch me, even though they get nothing out of it except entertainment. They're really voyeurs, and that's okay. They'll fight, they'll even pay for me to put on my show. Of course, I have to put gasoline in that from time to time. That's why nobody shouts louder for unborn babies than me. And it's why I invented the birther thing, by the way. Of course he was born here! But the same kind of people who I can hook so deeply are also going to be racist, a lot of them. Between you and me, it's 50 shades of dumb. But I love 'em! Nobody loves them more than me.
"Now you take the so-called smart people. They see what I'm doing. But they can't do a thing about it! Because the same time I'm breaking rules to get what I want, I'm being a jerk. Purposely! Birthirism was a perfect example. Then when they accuse me, I say they just don't like me because I'm not nice. And my big, beautiful, dumb army rushes to my defense. I love them! And so do the Republicans in Congress, which is why I've got it made."
12
You do realize that if Trump and his supporters in the GOP Senate and House were REALLY against abortion, there would be paternity suits cropping up every other day if not more often.
I mean, come on. Really, Dirty Donald? Really?
14
“The president accused Democrats of supporting infanticide, singling out Gov. Ralph S. Northam of Virginia for supporting a late-term abortion bill that Mr. Trump falsely said would 'execute a baby after birth.'”
Except it isn't false. Allow me to quote Gov. Northam:
“The infant would be delivered; the infant would be kept comfortable; the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desire, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
https://wtop.com/ask-the/2019/01/virginia-gov-northam-joins-wtop-live-jan-30/
It's fine to have the debate, and I'll gladly listen to all sides. But in this particular instance, the allegation is not even remotely false.
5
Where did he say the baby would be killed? Nowhere. Shouldn't all healthcare decisions be between patient and doctor?
5
@Mike
The quote above is about situations when a fatal or severe defect is found that would render death soon after birth when heroic intervention is not given. It is not about the average pregnancy.
7
@Mike
Resuscitate: to revive from apparent death or from unconsciousness.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resuscitate
Healthy newborns don't need to be resuscitated. Gov. Northam is clearly talking about infants with severe medical problems.
There is nothing wrong with parents and doctors discussing how to treat a severely ill newborn that barely survived delivery.
1
Trump's appearance at this march makes me sick to my stomach - or should I say womb? He is a raving misogynist and should have no say in how women manage their bodies - in fact, I would take away all male voting rights when it comes to a woman's right to manage her body. If birth control was readily and cheaply available and men respected a woman's right to say "NO" there would be very little need for abortion. There is nothing Christian about this march or about Trump - religion should not be abused in this way.
31
If you're against abortion, don't have one. Otherwise, mind your own business.
44
Read the book, "Fear," by Bob Woodward. Trump didn't even know the term "pro life" before he ran for president, when he was vetted by Steve Bannon for the race. In fact, Trump has primarily been pro abortion. When he was told he would only win GOP primaries if he became anti abortion, Bannon said he needed to be "pro-life." And Trump responded by saying, that's right, that's me, I"m pro-life. What a cynical hypocrite!!!
17
Why hasn't anybody asked him how many abortions he has funded, or insisted on? I seem to remember him telling Howard Stern that avoiding STDs was his "Vietnam." He has boasted that he was a ladies man.
22
I do not doubt for a minute that there is one (or more) abortions in
DJT’s sordid history—if only she/they would come forward now and clarify for these misguided folks his true self.
26
Right-wing elements in Germany today are using the cudgel of the Nazi past to thwart a woman's right to have an abortion.
There is not even a remote moral equivalency between, on the one hand, a hate-based policy organization bent on world domination; and, on the other hand, a woman being asked to give up her life, her livelihood and her future to do something with her body that she doesn't want to do.
If men could get pregnant, access to safe, legal abortion would be the 11th Commandment!
15
“Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” he told the crowd of religious-school groups and anti-abortion activists who packed the mall to hear him. And of course, we have never had a bigger liar in the White House as our president.
18
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray .....2 Corinthians 11:3.
We have a whole lot of people led astray.
2
"I am fighting for you!" > TRUMP TRANSLATOR > "I am fighting for me!"
10
The manipulative, hypocritical cynicism...the sheer, mindless gall of the man...takes one's breath away. He has set a low-water mark for the presidency that will sit for the ages in a deep, overflowing septic tank.
16
Oh yes....abortion! Always abortion! Because we don’t have enough issues!
If you want to cut Medicare and Medicaid to millions of Americans, you are not pro-life!
If you want to cut SNAP, Food Stamps to over 700K Americans, most of them children, you are not pro-life!
If you separate fa and incarcerated their children, you are not pro-life!
If you remove EPA safeguards for Clean Air and Water, you are not pro-life!
If you think it’s cool to assassinate anyone, no matter how evil, you are not pro-life!
If you want to dismantle the Affordable Healthcare Act, removing the pre-existing condition safeguard, you are not pro-life!
If you want to do away with the healthy lunch program in our schools, you are not pro-life!
Donald J Trump is not pro-life, he is only pandering to people who are very naive and easily conned!
43
If anyone is a walking billboard in favor of abortion, it’s Donald Trump. The world would be a better place had his mother availed herself of abortion services when she was pregnant with him.
12
Life doesn't "start". You've heard the term "life cycle"? A circle doesn't start, hence the metaphor. Gonads are alive. Sperm and egg are alive. Zygotes are alive. Choosing fertilization (which is a process BTW, not an instant) as the point at which to award rights is arbitrary. To insist that it is the scientific absolute truth that the Gerber baby pops into existence at the "instant" of fertilization is deliberate ignorance. It is a political and intrusive religious ideology forced on the rest of the country. If it where true that fertilization instantly produced babies then at least a third of all babies are thrown out in the garbage since that many zygotes fail to implant in the uterus and are passed in a normal menstruation. I'm not seeing tampons getting burials.
17
The proverbial deal with the devil.
6
I’m a practicing Catholic and liberal to moderate on most issues, including this one. While I’m more ambiguous than some of my peers about the morality of the issue, I always thought the question of legality boiled down to safe or unsafe abortions. The rate of women obtaining abortions is largely constant regardless of whether it is legal or not, but the level of unsafe abortions sharply rises when the procedure is illegal. I’m sympathetic to the pro life position, but so wonder if it is really served in the long run by association with this immoral and unconstitutional administration.
At best, Roe tosses the question back to the states and I suspect most will follow Nevada’s lead and allow the procedure with some restriction. The real thing pro lifers should focus on is providing urgently needed health care to expecting mothers so our infant mortality rates go down. A single payer or public option would save far more babies than overturning Roe.
21
President Trump was elected to protect life. He is acting like a politician, except in his case he's a politician who delivers.
Meanwhile Sanders and Warren are actively campaigning on their pro-abortion positions: "Abortion is health care."
5
If he was elected to protect life why is he rolling back environmental laws that protect business but not people? Oh I see. This is selective protection.
23
@AACNY Sanders and Warren are saying this because it is true. Pregnancy is a medical condition, frequently a grave medical condition, and the need to terminate a pregnancy IS health care.
19
@AACNY
Please demonstrate how Warren and Sanders are “pro-abortion.”
I'm no fan of Trump personally but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I love how the liberal press calls the pro-life movement anti-abortion. Can we call the opposition anti-life?
8
@tnl:
Since the anti-abortion crowd ceases to care about life once it's outside the womb, I think the more accurate term for them is, indeed, "anti-life."
Not what you meant, I know. Ah, those pesky unintended consequences!
14
I don't want to see the right complain about welfare if a woman is accidentally pregnant or raped or incest.
3
Pro lifers should properly be called forced birther or pro fetus, since they do not support any policies for the health and well being of children once they are out of the womb. Their hypocrisy in that regard is breathtaking.
3
To reiterate what people know: Trump could not care less about abortion. Or Evangelicals. Or coal miners.
All he wants is their vote from the lip service he gives them.
Promises, aggrandizements, empty words.
Vote for me and, I swear, I'll do for you.
Once the voting is over, he won't take your calls.
30
Meanwhile, he’s already putting feelers out about cutting back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And exploring ways to ban pregnant women from entering the country.
10
The difficult decisions people make in real life to chose abortion deserve more honest acceptance than to simply bring children to a March for Life as pawns before they can understand. I am a Catholic and choice is what human decency allows women. Get others out of private matters.
33
If this lobby pushes too hard, they may not be happy with the eventual pushback. If, for example, they try to withhold finding for states that help women pay for their abortions, there may soon come a day when the federal government withholds funding fo states that try to impede the abortion right.
7
One cannot look at Trump's face and believe he believes any of what he is saying, like pretty much anything he says and does. But this is a good political move on his part. He needs the Evangelical vote very badly, and it does appear that they are getting what they want. Of course this will likely push more pro-choice voters to the polls as well. But Trump is all in, because he has to be, because losing reelection likely means he will be trading the Oval Office for a jail cell.
16
He’s only pro HIS life and he doesn’t want to spend what little time he has left in jail actually paying for his crimes.
5
I wonder, is it possible for us men to get the same rights as the left wants women to have? Because interestingly, I as a man can be jailed in all 50 states for not wanting a baby. Isn't that interesting? A woman can't, but I can. If I get a woman pregnant and say, nope! I don't want it, she can take me to court, have my wages garnished, my tax refund appropriated, and even have me jailed - yes, put in jail - for wanting to exercise the same right that she demands.
So I'm wondering, can I get the same rights?
3
@Mike
Then wear a condom. Is this a difficult problem to figure out?
19
@Mike Get someone pregnant and if they keep the baby you should help pay for it. Sounds to me like someone you know is a deadbeat dad. If the religious right gets their way you won't have a choice.
10
@Mike, sure, just as soon as you can take on the dangers and risks of pregnancy and childbirth - which have dangers and risks up to and including the permanent disability or death of the pregnant woman. For the time being, however, suggest you ensure that (1) you only engage in sexual congress with women with whom you have secured prior agreement regarding your reproductive (or non-) goals, and (2) you always wear a condom. SO easy.
14
"Life is so precious!", until it's actually viable. Then it suddenly becomes not only worthless, but an, "undue burden on the tax payer!".
There are currently over 2 million homeless children in this country. And the GOP has shown again and again that it couldn't care less about them or their plight. That's how "precious" the welfare of child is to them.
You know, I've noticed something about the "moral positions" of modern Republicans over the years. And it's that they always seem to be whatever costs them the least. After all, there most consistent "moral position" is "It's not my problem! You're on you own!".
33
@Chicago Guy My favorite Hitchens quote and a good reason to tax churches:
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
1
Shrewd move by Trump. He knows that his support for enough single issue voters will get him re-elected. Single issues like. Unwavering support for Israel. Anti-immigration stance. Tax cuts for the rich. And anti-Muslim. A frightening prospect but a winning formula.
6
@Milton Lewis
A demagogue - parroting back to voters what they want to hear.
1
"You've been given a great gift Donald! A chance to see what the world would would be like without you!" And after a few seconds, Clarence, Angel Second Class, realized exactly how Wonderful that World would have been...
9
@Chicago Guy - done on SNL in December 2018, It's A Wonderful Trump Cold Open - “Every time a bell rings, someone you know quits or goes to jail!”
1
Women with money or contacts will always be able to get a safe abortion. It's the poor women who would suffer and die if abortion was illegal. Republicans/conservatives care about the unborn but once it's born it's, "Ok, sweetheart, now your're on your own with the baby, no help from us."
I can't believe we are still debating this issue!
20
“The far left is actively working to erase our God-given rights”
Typical Trump. Saying the exact opposite of what's real.
Exchange 'far left' with 'far right' and suddenly that sentence makes sense.
21
I've never gotten the argument that an abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. Couldn't you make the same argument about anything? My use of opiates is between me and my doctor. Blah, blah. My refusal to use vaccines is between me and my doctor. Now, I don't want to go back to the days of backstreet abortions performed by butchers. But let's be realistic. A healthy fetus at ten weeks, five weeks, pick a time, barring some untoward event, is likely to come to full term and be born. So I think any woman seeking an abortion should have a good reason that passes not just the scrutiny of her doctor but some sort of judicial body as well. At worst, the woman gives the baby up for adoption. Now, if the fetus is severely deformed or has clearly defined health issues that will cause life long problems, or if the mother is at an elevated risk level, OK. But abortion should never be on demand or something you decide, oopsie, and get rid of it.
3
Nope. Her choice, no one else's. Should we set up panels to make other medical decisions for people?
9
@Ralphie Opiate users often turn to crime to fund their addiction. Unvaccinated people are also a danger to others. Women aborting fetuses hurt no one. If addicts were independent and law-abiding, I doubt anyone would care what they ingested.
3
@Ralphie
“At worst” she gives it up for adoption? Oh yeah. No big deal. She’s just forced to undergo pregnancy and birth against her will. Who cares? Just a woman. We can all claim entitlement to her body, right? If a baby can use it against her will, why can’t it’s father? Who cares if she’s forced to undergo major abdominal surgery against her will, or loses her job, or goes insane because she’s forced to gestate. Who cares. Just a woman. No big deal. Oh, and then, after you’ve forced her to give birth and become a mother, she gets to give away her baby. Fabulous. I doubt that will have any long term consequences. But who cares?
It’ll never happen to you, so it’s pretty easy to just pretend like it’s no big deal, isn’t it Ralphie?
5
The tide isn’t turning in their favor. The gerrymandering is. I’m sure if they knew how many Donnie juniors were never born...well...they still wouldn’t care.
14
The impeachment trial is showing that Trump does not act alone in his abuses. Despots never do. Without these folks, Trump would be a 6 time bankrupted aging reality TV feature with a ghost written book and a show edited to make him look like a titan of business.
This crowd's pro life passion applies only to fetuses. Such easy self righteous morality based more on GOP wedge issues than Gospel. It would take a miracle to make them care about the living.
Christ wept.
21
I was part of “this crowd” and I promise you, there are people who are pro-life beyond birth. I am one of them.
There are also people who know that Trump is not pro-life. I am also one of those.
I vote for I believe will bring the most dignity for the most humans; from conception to natural death.
1
@Jennifer Greene, and because there will ALWAYS be women who do not wish to gestate a pregnancy to term, what will ALWAYS bring the most dignity for the most human women is the unobstructed right to freely obtain, without interference, safe and legal pregnancy termination.
3
@Jennifer Greene
I lived on Capitol Hill when our child was in 1st grade and was confronted on our residential block by people carrying fetuses in jars and posters with bloody fetuses blown up to the size of small cars. But I did not see this crowd carrying posters demanding essential and emergency government services to aid the living. In fact, from what I can tell this crowd is happy to vote for candidates working to trash the entire government social safety net for the sake forcing women to bear unwanted, unviable, and even dead fetuses to term. And to deny the death with dignity to the suffering.
On the other hand, I know people who are anti abortion who put their personal beliefs in a larger context when voting. Knowing no one will force them to have an abortion. If you are one of these then you will understand my comments and I hope you will accept my apology if I have offended you.
6
Our mercenary president. He is not committed to moral cases, only to voters who oppose Democratic candidates and democratic ideals. Such as pro-lifers, white nationalists, Climate Change deniers, and all far right political movements that aspire to legally impose their limited understanding of the world on Americans. Rallying behind an unethical, autocratic leader is the beginning of the end for the pro-life movement.
10
Ironic - Trump says he reveres “the sanctity of life,” yet he cages brown children whose parents are seeking asylum and denies them medical care so some have died. He and the Republican Party want to nullify the ACA, which has helped millions of Americans, including infants and children, to get healthcare they need to live. He is taking away SNAP benefits that help feed hungry children. He has run up $3 trillion in debt helping the already wealthy avoid taxes, while middle and lower income parents struggle.
Trump, who used to support Planned Parenthood, is now anti-abortion since it fits his current agenda, but he sure isn’t pro-life, and neither are many of the hypocrites at that March.
25
Trump has no closely-held beliefs on anything. For him it's all about what helps him personally and politically. The real issue is not abortion per se, it's the right of a woman to have control over her own body.
We've all seen Trump's disdain and disrespect for women. Trump is just a control freak who wants to turn the clock back to when men had complete dominance over women's lives.
14
Maybe if Trump bothered to check some statistics about the color and heritage of many of the women he is condemning to give birth, and if his Base and white nationalist supporting cast thought about the color and heritage of the children who will be born against their mothers' wishes, they would realized that they are not likely to be MAGA supporters when they are old enough to vote (assuming they survive the school shootings that Trump and his 2nd Amendment fanatics won't stop).
5
Strong faith that many of these supposedly against it have actually paid for abortions.
8
Does anyone believe that Trump has not paid for abortions?
This bad-faith political theater is so absurdly transparent.
22
Separation of church and state, means not only someones right to practice the beliefs of their choice but also frees me from those beliefs. If Abortion is so evil why have these people not been on the front lines in support of birth control ? would that have not been a good compromise? They seem to want what many religions want, to shove their beliefs down the throat of others.
15
How are women supposed to have sex then? No birth control is 100%. Even if she does everything she can, goes as far as getting her tubes tied (which is a much more complex procedure than a vasectomy), but still gets pregnant, you are telling me she has to bring it to term? Pregnancy is not a week long process, which is how people talk about it. Can you imagine 9 whole months of physical/mental/emotional toll for something you did not even want??? Just say you don't want women having sex for pleasure and stop making this about "children". If you did say that, you probably would lose all your male support...
12
Any man who impregnates a woman without her consent must be sentenced to life in prison. No more problem.
9
This is the old paradigm nonsense that Billy Graham brought into vogue in desperation during the late 60's exodus from the organized religion BUSINESS. Look up Frank Schaffer on YouTube, the son of the famous evangelist, and author of Crazy for God. One more thing: Roe v Wade was ushered in by a majority of Republican appointed Supreme Court Judges. In fact, the dissenting opinion was written by a Justice who was appointed by a Democratic President. This is a very important point that is never seen or heard from in the media. Please, let's get real, people.
Coming from an Irish Catholic family of ELEVEN, you know my parents never used birth control. How many holier than thou's can say that? My point being, Planned Parenthood is essential for preventing unwanted children. Why not get behind it, rather than pretending that religion has anything to do with family planning and survival in the real world?
11
At least follow your own guidelines and call it what it is "Pro Life" rally.
2
Of course many of us know that Trump is a charlatan, he stated on "Meet the Press" on October 24, 1999 that he is "very pro choice." Videos easily found on YouTube. His views now are only to appease his Christian base. They might not care about Trump's previous views, but it's up to Democrats to "enlighten" his Christian base. If Democrats don't, who will?
5
“Human Rights begin in the Womb,” Roy Hagemyer, 62, a pastor, "and end at birth", my mother circa 1975.
10
March For Life? What is that, anyway?
Here I've been reading the NYT religiously for decades, and I'm only now learning that there's a giant rally attended by tens of thousands..? And it's been going on for years and years?
Yuppie couples looking for an extra bedroom in Billyburg is fit to print, but this hasn't been until now?
Not tipping my hat to their cause, just pointing out what's what.
1
It's very unfortunate that Trump's mother chose to give birth to him.
11
Anti-abortion arguments will fizzle in the face of climate battles. Two fantasy crowds to exit stage right.
4
So when will he start caring about the children who have already been born?
11
The USA is ranked 27th in the world for maternal mortality rates
and about the same for infant mortality. Do these rankings signal
alarm in the pro-life movement?
I hope so. Where women’s health
rights are respected and supported
families can thrive.
6
Give me a break. If anyone doesn’t see thru his transparent attempt to keep up his popularity, he/she is a fool. Period.amen. And you’re dragging this country down.
22
Strange that a man who must have relied heavily on the availability of abortion to avoid the consequences of his rampant womanizing and promiscuity should have the chutzpah to stand up before this crowd as the Great Defender of the right to life. But he's never had either shame or a whit of honesty to slow him up on the hypocrisy score.
38
@Virginia
Exactly. Why hasn't anybody asked him about this?
5
Pope Francis has stated repeatedly, abortion has one place in politics. These people are seriously misled by a two-headed snake.
5
What a pious and holy man we have as our moral leader.
4
@Bob
You know, as those who condemn nascent life to a for-profit an abattoir...
you are being sarcastic, right?
3
@Bob Frankly, he has competition from America's best Christian: Betty Bower! (still available on YouTube)
"But we must all bring Glory to our Lord in our own particular way. And if He chooses to use my perfect size four frame and regal carriage to delight His followers with the flawless nuance of top Italian designers, then who am I, as His humble servant, to eschew such a specific calling?"
Of all the cheats in the world, religious ones are the worst, and I hope Evangelicals catch on, but I'm not holding my breath.
16
Can you say "pander"? Here is a man who has cheated on all three of his wives, had affairs with apparently dozens of women - porn stars, Playboy bunnies, etc, brags of grabbing them by their... well, you know, and who separated 5,400 children from their parents at our border, a figure that only became public knowledge in October. THIS man is suddenly a "savior" to the anti-choice crowd? Incredibly Trumpish.
34
Posturing Conservative hypocrites care more about a zygote than a newborn child. Their so-called defense of life ends at birth.
27
@Kevin C.
Parental responsibility.
Look it up.
@EGD
There is nothing responsible about having a baby you don’t want and can’t take care of.
Elmer Gantry incarnate shows up in 2020, to put the fear of god into free thinking woman. Let’s show the devil, who is to be feared.
14
Trump is desperate.
12
i wonder how many abortions The Donald was party to - as a cause and/or payer - when he was cheating on each of his 3 wives or during his "playboy" life style in between marriages where he's bragged of his affairs with other men's wives.
21
They should be called pro-birth instead of pro-life
14
@Fred Make that forced birth.
6
It's all about the votes. Trump has absolutely no belief system, whether it be religion, abortion, cherishing the arts, being faithful to a spouse, valuing charities. He simply does what he has to to garner groups of votes. He is an absolutely horrible person.
22
If Democrat candidates come out in favor of abortion without limits, are they courting votes too?
Yep. He's just courting your votes, folks. He doesn't care about the sanctity of LIFE. Guaranteed, if Melania, Ivanka, or Tiffany needed an abortion, even if Roe v. Wade was overturned, they could still get one. Those overly-privileged white folks, so SAD.
14
But what about children who are born left handed? Do you know how hard it is to find left handed scissors? Didn’t think about that, did you, you pro-life sickos. Making a child use the wrong scissors to cut a piece of paper. Revolting.
3
Now that Trump has gotten some exercise in he can join a few black lives matter marches...Oh wait.
6
I would like to know how many babies are pro abortion.
4
The hypocrisy and venality of this criminal in the White House are so profound they beggar the imagination.
Will no one rid us of this meddlesome lunatic?
7
Too bad the reporter who wrote this article couldn't have remained unbiased. This is what's wrong with the left! Biased news leading blind sheep ..... right over a cliff!
7
You’re taking about Trump, the biggest con man, snake oil salesman of all time. How can anybody believe this one time Democrat is pro life.
10
I love how these holy-rollers have adopted the slimiest, wife-cheating, draft-dodging, porn-star-extorting, lying, cheating spawn of Satan as their standard-bearer.
29
@Kurt
But enough about Democrat star Bill Clinton...
Pro-birth does not equal pro-life. For anyone to be pro-life, the life of the mother is of great significance. The welfare of the child after birth also matters. For all the Serena Joys at the rally today, they might get the world that they are so passionately demanding and then, like Serena realize that it's hell to actually live in that world.
10
@ADubs check out care-net
@Aaron, so called "Care Net" is a human trafficking syndicate.
"In 1994 the Village Voice investigated several California CPCs in Care Net, the largest network of centers in the country, and found gross ethical violations at an affiliated adoption agency, where director Bonnie Jo Williams secured adoptions by warning pregnant women about parenthood’s painfulness, pressuring them to sign papers under heavy medication and in one case detaining a woman in labor for four hours in a CPC."
https://www.thenation.com/article/shotgun-adoption/
4
So, our president supports unborn children while he orders born ones in cages?
21
@sdavidc9
Your comment reflects why men (if you are one) should have no say in a woman’s choice.
If you are a woman, shame on you.
4
Will the Year of the Rat bring accounts of abortions the fake-haired man has paid for?
7
Catholics should be wary of Trump’s commitment to Right to Life. As a Catholic and a Democrat, I refuse to support anybody on a single issue. “Love your neighbor as yourself “ should run through all the candidate’s positions at home and abroad. Does Trump exemplify this first and greatest commandment to love God and neighbor? Consider this precept , this bedrock belief and then vote for Trump’s opponent who upholds this fundamental belief.Some Evangelical Protestants have been duped into supporting Trump; Catholics should not join their ranks because Trump patronizes them as a single issue anti abortion voter.
30
Donald Trump claims to be pro-life but in the mean time his EPA is cutting regulations regarding clean air and clean water. This means more pollution in our air and water.. Sure - Trump is pro-life and I am the Queen of the World
47
@susan
Right on, Susan, right on. It's a big phony carnival for him.
6
I wonder if there is a way for the Senate to hold a secret ballot on the questions of witnesses and of documents. I suspect the outcome would be different.
15
He’s pandering to his religious base, getting them fired up for November. Time to trot out the wedge issues again. Hopefully he’ll be out in November and we can move on.
19
If stopping abortion was the true objective of the "pro-life" movement, they should embrace every opportunity to avoid the bloodshed. They should be promoting sex education. They should be making contraception available to everyone. They are not. They are imposing their religious beliefs and the social order that it necessitates on the rest of us. They have no right to do so.
56
There are many pro-life evangelicals living in the wheat belt red states who will vote for Donald Trump in 2020 for this issue and this alone. They explain away Trump's sordid past; his association with Jeffrey Epstein; his difficulty being truthful; and his impeachment. Seems to me Trump would serve all humankind better if he started protecting the natural world and the environment rather than turning back every federal law that protects them. More than 7 billion people on this planet and some people are concerned about abortion. Unbelievable.Protecting and preserving the environment: now that is pro-life.
34
Trump is diverting attention from the impeachment trial any way he possibly can.
30
...And it's working!
Hypocrisy has little value in garnering supporters to this cause. I cannot think of anyone I'd be less likely to invite or to suffer the presence of at a pro-life rally than someone who values life so little that his administration forges ahead removing protections from our water, our environment, from the funds seniors worked to build up in Social Security, and from the food our children eat in school. Moreover, the list goes on - not the least of which is disrespect for family-life demonstrated at our southern border: ripping children (whose parents did not abort them) from the arms of those parents who allowed their children's births and who have treked uncounted miles on foot and through uncounted hardship in the attempt to provide those children a safer life.
20
Multiple disparate thoughts:
1. The "what's fair is fair" thought: If women are not going to be allowed to have abortions, then men should be required to have vasectomies until such time that they are ready to have kids.
2. The Republican lack of foresight thought: An already over burdened, underfunded, foster care system is going to crushed under the weight of this influx of babies. Even if 50% of the women who are forced to carry their pregnancies to term keep their newborn, that's still 50% going into the system. And then that will force the government to pump more money into yet another government program (which, supposedly the Pubs are against doing).
3. The Snarky thought: Knowing how much of a philanderer Trump was/is, what is the likelihood that he has never had one of his paramours to have an abortion? I don't think he even really cares about the issue. He's just doing this to pander to his base.
28
@ Bret...a thousand recommendations on your comments!
4
So here's the thing. Every person who points out (correctly) that Trump really doesn't give a fig about this issue is missing the key point; pro-lifers are purely transactional. Nothing else matters beyond this issue. Nothing. Trump could order the military to mow down civilians, and they'd still support him. They don't care who he is, they don't care what he does, they don't care what destruction he causes. They simply don't care. He gives them the only thing they want. They are scary people.
35
Yes, scary and dangerous.
8
Those are done extremely rarely and after much thought and discussion. between mother and doctor.
4
@Saints Fan And that's why the huge push to make _all_ abortions illegal, including and especially attempting to shut down every clinic that does early stage abortions only?
And that's why Ohio has been debating whether to put to death _anyone_ who has an abortion or who assists in providing one?
Mmm hmm...
4
It's a part of my body if it cannot survive outside of it. Just as a tumor or an ulcer.
And each woman is the SOLE keeper and regulator of her own body.
27
@Gitanjali "Just as a tumor or an ulcer." Nice way to refer to a fetus. Not really helping your cause. You may want to come up with another argument.
3
@Gitanjali tumors or ulcers do not have brains or heartbeats.
2
@mack
Neither does Trump.
4
Simple politics. He feels he has a chance with these folks since they are one-issue voters and he believes they won't care about other very anti-life measures he's taking on medical care, the environment, regulations, etc...
His very presidency has made people sick with depression which is sure to shorten lives in what appears to be our banana republic.
16
@Saints Fan no one is pro abortion. Woman just don’t want to be forced by the government to give birth.
2
Perhaps the Democrats could stop with their circular firing squad and, instead, learn from evangelical Christians, who can stomach Trump in order to further their goals. If they can accept the Devil as a Godly instrument to accomplish their ends, I would think any Democrat should be able to accept any of the candidates without reservation to further the end of defeating Trump. Keep your eye on the prize. And, remember, if you don't win, you lose. Big time.
9
@Steve Fankuchen
Evangelicals show up and vote. Reliably. And they vote for candidates who deliver on their key issues. They do not have litmus tests or hoops through which a candidate must jump to meet their standards.
In other words, they are not emotional nor do they require lip service be paid. They are practical, focused and know that their vote is the most reliable currency they have in transactions with politicians.
Trump gets this and has delivered royally for them.
3
@Steve Fankuchen Maybe Steve more Democrats have a moral code involving conscience .
5
@AACNY They are told what to think and do from the tax-free pulpit. That definitely neds to change. No more free ride for the church parties.
6
Did Trump ever pay for or cause the perceived need for an abortion? If I had to bet, I would say it is likely. Is this one more way that the media gave him a free pass?
14
@rocky vermont Interesting that I have been reading the type of comment you made quite a bit lately and perhaps there is truth to it. I wonder if someone who does know let's it out and the media picks up on it. Of course I would not expect the National Enquirer to run it. I know there was a story a few years ago told by a Trump hotel doorman (who did pass a lie detector test) but the Enquirer killed it I wonder if these people would believe it.
3
Trump’s opportunism know no bounds. Everything he does is motivated by his insatiable need for self gratification which is now focused 100% on being re-elected including pandering to his base, bribing/extorting foreign leaders as with Ukraine’s President or pandering to Putin who he can rely on to help him cheat the system for his personal gain.
17
Evangelicals have no respect for the first amendment, or the fact that abortion is a legal procedure as deemed by our highest court.
As such I would appreciate if they exit the United States of America and form their own country.
13
Perhaps the Democrats could stop with their circular firing squad and, instead, learn from evangelical Christians, who can stomach Trump in order to further their goals. If they can accept the Devil as a Godly instrument to accomplish their ends, I would think any Democrat should be able to accept any of the candidates without reservation to further the end of defeating Trump. Keep your eye on the prize. And, remember, if you don't win, you lose. Big time.
5
The hardcore GOP loves life until life falls out of the birth canal . Then they’ll tell we’re not going to help you and your baby.
Trump’s photo op with anti abortion activists is simply that. A photo-op . After all Trump I not cares about Trump. End of story.
15
If anyone believes Trump actually cares about Right to Life, then you must not have noticed his reverential treatment of women.
Who do these men (?) think they are. Worry about your own body and let women do the same.
I’d like to have a law that regulates men and decides whether or not they can have vasectomies or any other care they might need.
Trump is simply pandering for votes and will do anything to get them.
Have some respect for yourself and the rights of other women when you vote.
This whole thing is a charade.
11
The Great Divider knows what buttons to press. But, he's just channeling. Interesting how those so eager to force a woman to deliver a child are often the same ones who abhor any kind of birth control and also wash their hands of any responsibility to the child after it is born. Yes, theirs is the duty to see that sin is rewarded with suitable punishment.
10
Infuriating. Pandering. Insincere. Hypocritical. Transparent.
It would be so interesting to know (and we never will) how many abortions Trump has financed. Apparently, he doesn’t use his own birth control when he has sex with adult-film stars. He has “paternity” clauses in his non-disclosure agreements with the women he had sex with. I really doubt he has had a change of heart regarding his 1999 statement about right-to-choose. He simply wants to solidify the evangelical vote. It’s amazingly obvious.
If we ever got a break from Trump’s outrageousness, I’d be so grateful. But it’s an assault on a daily basis. Each day brings another reason to despair.
Voters - vote Blue, no matter who. Now is NOT the time to pout or stay home if your favorite candidate is not the Democrat you wanted. ANY one of the candidates will be a cleansing breath of fresh air. Our country is so toxic now and the Occupant and his minions are the primary polluters.
19
Jesus taught us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. We could all stand to show love to those we don’t understand.
5
Abortion is a matter between a woman and her doctor. It's her body and her life. It's no one else's business, especially rich white men and religious zealots. Neither are qualified to weigh in on a woman's decision. It's hideous especially when you want to take away affordable health care.
If you want to address a right to life, why don't you go picket a gun shop, or talk to gangs and murderers? Because women are easy targets.
26
Trump is the first president who only supports the people that voted for him. That makes him a tyrant. But it is republicans that have allowed this lawless, self dealing and corrupt leader to trample the constitution. Vote republicans out in November - all of them.
15
@Deirdre I absolutely agree, and this should include voting on all levels of government.
2
The March for Life rally... that annual event where hundreds of school kids get bussed to DC to “March” against the rights of grown adults. KIDS marching against tax paying, voting, working ADULT’S rights.
17
I’m confused. Obama did not significantly if at all change abortion rights legislation.
3
I'd find the anti-abortion movement more compelling if its members showed an equal amount of concern about the well-being of children/fetuses after birth.
18
@Saints Fan because the right wing have cut food stamps and programs for the poor. They have gutted environmental laws, allowing corporations to pollute our air and water. Once a child is born, especially if they’re poor the evangelicals say it’s now time for personal responsibility, even though Jesus was all about helping the impoverished and sick, todays Christians seem to think the poor and sick are that way because they lack initiative.
6
No matter where he goes. No matter what the event. No matter what the topic. When Trump speaks it's only about one thing....him.
14
What grandstanding Hogwash ! Very much like Trump's drone-killing of a Terrorist, this "chest-thumping" (AND Bible belting) is fully intended to DISTRACT any and all attention from his on-going Impeachment Trial.
I didn't see Jesus, or The Lord, wearing a M.A.G.A. red cap.
Whatever happened to "separation of Church and Sate" ?
15
The conservative Christian preoccupation with abortion goes, I believe, deeper than a desire to control women’s bodies or to protect the innocent from violent death. At its core, this cause celebre is, it seems to me, an attempt to preserve a belief in the soul that guarantees their immortality.
The “pro life” abortion position is a perfect confluence of conservative male sexism (control the women!) and conservative female maternalism (protect the children!), but what joins the conservative genders is a deep hatred of mortality, an ultimately childish rebellion against the fact of their own mortality. They hate death!
The emotional punch behind these three motives makes them perfect marks for Trump’s cynical manipulation and accounts for how willing they are to blind themselves to the president’s obvious immorality. It is not the child or the fetus whose life they are ultimately trying to protect; it’s their own.
16
@Paris Spleen
Very interesting analysis... I've never heard it put this way but what you've said makes total sense. Thanks for that.
4
@Paris Spleen Interesting. But mortality? Allegedly the rapture, the only thing that appears to matter to these people, is open to both the dead and the living so I do not understand why they would be so neurotically, or is that psychotically, obsessed with mortality.
1
Many commenters are missing the point about the anti-abortion movement's support for the President. He has given them everything they want, and his reelection could put them in in sight of their goal to make abortion illegal or virtually impossible in the U.S. That is the only thing that matters. Whatever else the President has done, will do, or what he personally believes is completely irrelevant. A belief that abortion is a moral wrong is their personal testament, and they could care less that for the President, it is just a political one.
397
You are completely correct. I have good friends for whom this is the singular issue they vote around, regardless of any apparent contradictions the rest of a candidate’s platform or moral conduct may present. This is the hill they will die on and it is impossible to convince them that this might be the wrong approach.
78
@David Godinez And that is why our democracy is finished.
81
@David Godinez and
Just wish these so-called pro lifers cared about the child after it is born.
175
As a liberal Catholic, I have always been appalled by the Democrats' stance on abortion and how we can think of ourselves as the party that protects the weak and disenfranchised when we can't get it right on this issue. We must cast no judgment on those that get abortions but we do have to call the act by name: the intentional destruction of human life. Abortion is not healthcare because pregnancy is not a disease. Abortion is not a "reproductive right" because reproduction has already taken place. Yes, we must fight to lessen inequality in our country, we must strengthen our unions and improve worker's wages/conditions, we must provide better healthcare, education, childcare, and housing, we must protect women, people who identify as LGBT, and racial minorities. BUT we also must protect the unborn and their inalienable right to LIFE.
10
@Lucas You do not have to be suffering from a disease in order to obtain healthcare.
13
@Lucas
Says you. The unborn blob of cells does not have an inalienable right to life. See how this goes?
6
@Lucas That doesn't sound very liberal
7
Women with money can still get abortions, keep them private, and oppose abortions (for women without money). We need a diagnostic device to identify women who were recently pregnant but are not pregnant any more. Such women would be investigated as possible murder suspects.
People with money would find a fair anti-abortion policy abhorrent and oppressive.
As a first step towards reducing the number of abortions, all abortions should be publicly known and particularly abortions by people who have taken a public stand against them, and perhaps people whose families have done so. Revealing their names is a job for anti-abortion hackers until governments get serious about discouraging abortions for everyone, not just for those who cannot afford the procedure.
1
@sdavidc9 Is this a joke?
16
@sdavidc9 To add to the joke, I think all men should be forcibly vaccinated so that their sperm is not able to produce children. When they have met a woman they wish to have a child with, they should have to go for training, for a year, to learn what it takes to have a child.
Only then, will the procedure be reversed, and men 'allowed' to produce children.
3
One thing that stands out in my mind is how peaceful and dignified the marchers are at this pro life rally. They are not rowdy or disruptive and take the cause very seriously. This speaks well of the people involved and how important it is to get this pro life message out. They are excellent role models and can take the movement far. They will not give up the good fight.
33
@KMW
Of course, let's not quibble about which side is willing to use lethal means to achieve goals.
37
Yes, the good fight to control women’s bodies and eliminate the right to privacy between a woman and her physician. But glad the protesters were so well behaved.
83
@KMW Do remember that the pro-choice movement also considers their/our cause--women's reproductive freedom--very much "the good fight", and that the most violent and disruptive protests, including murder of physicians--have been made by anti-abortion activists.
85
Let's face it, Trump wants to appeal to his base, right wing constituents and evangelicals because that is the only way he can win the next election. Of course many of the very wealthy business men will most likely also vote for him.
I just hope and pray that the democrats come out and vote because this democratic Republic depends on them. I do not even want to think about the consequences if Trump is re-elected.
28
The groups call themselves "Pro-Life". Whehther you agree with them or not, aren't they entitled to be called by the name they use? They are against abortion because they are "pro-life".
Are there any other groups which do not get the minimum respect of being referred to as their chosen name.
Once we start renaming groups in accordance with our subjective opinions about them, where does it stop ?
Those opposed to abortion sometimes unfairly label pro-choice or abortion rights groups as "pro-abortion". They too would use such a term in accordance with their subjective opinion.
Just refer to any group by the name they choose. Doing otherwise automatically imposes a judgment which does not belong in an objective news article.
6
@Gino G You have a point up to a point. But history is crammed full of groups that named themselves in ways that completely hid their real objectives. Check out the origin of the term "bolsheviki".
1
A group’s chosen name should not be used on its own if it is misleading. These people are not “pro-life.” They have no regard for the lives of women. If we’re going to call them “pro-life,” we will need to apply a modifier like we do with other fundamentalist groups: “a far-right religious movement,” “a right-wing extremist group,” etc. These terms are used in objective news articles, so this shouldn’t be a problem for you.
4
@Gino G
Actually, anti-abortion seems like a much more specific term for these people's agenda. Pro-life is a meaningless phrase. Most everyone is "pro-life" in the broadest sense, meaning that most everyone wants something to stay alive once it is born.
7
Anti-Abortion- Pro-Life people are too extreme in my few. Extremists see the world mostly in black and white and there seems to be no gray or in between. Why should a women who has been raped and consequently becomes pregnant be denied an abortion within the first three month? Why should a woman be denied an abortion if early on it is determined that the fetus she carries will be borne with Tay-Sachs Disease? The same thing can be said for Down Syndrome and some other congenital diseases. Yes, some children do quite well with Down Syndrome and others not so much. Therefore, in these circumstances it should be a woman's choice to choose. I am certainly against late pregnancy abortions as well as using abortion as a form of birth control. Lastly, what is most irritating to me is that men march in front of abortion clinics and participate in anti abortion marches. My question, having known male and female anti-abortionists and pro-lifers without children, is why do they not step forward and adopt unwanted babies? As we all know many unwanted children end up in differend foster care homes throughout their young lives and the psychological toll on these children is well known.
16
It was all right for President Obama and Hillary Clinton to support Planned Parenthood and abortion but not for President Trump to support the pro life cause. We do not really know what his position on pro life/pro choice is but the most important thing is that he supports pro life people. This is a first for the pro life movement and is very encouraging. It gives us hope that things can and will change in a positive way for the pro life cause. Things often start out slowly and then continue with a loud bang. This has what has happened with pro life. More people are pro life today than ever before and that support only grows. This is such a wonderful event.
3
@KMW
yes but chris Matthews asked him if a woman should be3 punished for having an abortion he said yes. chris asked him what should happen to the father. he said he should not be punished.
if you don't agree with abortion don't have one.
15
@KMW
We can always count on you, KMW. If you think Trump is "pro-life" I've got a bridge to sell ya. It's only about votes, that is all.
17
@KMW
yes but chris Matthews asked him if a woman should be3 punished for having an abortion he said yes. chris asked him what should happen to the father. he said he should not be punished.
if you don't agree with abortion don't have one.
also, in a similar vein SCOTUS heard oral arguments yesterday for the ability for private and religious schools to be able to get funding for their schools just like public schools.
last I read the constitution said no establishment of religion. alito and Roberts both said it is discrimination such as that akin to race.
4
The issue isn't about abortion, public safe healthcare or family planning.
It's all about dictating who can benefit from community healthcare funds that support our most vulnerable families.
They simply want to close our long funded public supported family health clinics that care for our most vulnerable esp. the poor underpaid families among us.
Reverse Robin Hood.
They also want to steal from the public-funded accounts we paid into for years, that we own and paid into to fund our retirement. We trusted them to keep our mandated to pay into funds safe. But the Trumpians see it as an easy to exploit and siphon from, to benefit the rich as a treasure trove to exploit.
The Trumpians want to take your social security and medicare insurance money next. Think of them as corporate raiders.
They want us to bail them out again. We have done this and been repeatedly exploited for decades. Healthcare is the right thing to do. Trust women to care for their families.
24
The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in your lead photo is wonderful. Thank you.
5
@Chuck Sparks
Superstition in support of oppression.
4
God bless you President Trump. You have my vote.
Yes, your past is not without sin (you were once a Democrat after all). However, some of our worst sinners later become our greatest saints.
6
@Mauricio
he is far from a saint saying that the 34 soldiers who may have received a TBI due to the Iranian strike (where he said no one was hurt then proceeded to say oh they would just have a headache, it isn't really anything.
7
@Mauricio Oh my God, you are joking, no? Who will you hire for President next time? Let's see: A murderer? A rapist? A known criminal, who has spent 20 years in jail? You would have to work a wee bit harder with one of those, but I am sure you are up to the challenge.
6
name one.
2
He appears at the "Right to Life" rally on the same week he proposes a travel ban on pregnant women. Onion or Not-the-Onion?
27
How can anyone believe anything he says? This president respects no one. This is the man who put children in cages, separated nursing mothers from their babies, has cut food programs, health care and education for children, refuses to stop gun violence affecting our children's schools. How can he say he respects life when he cares nothing for those of us already here?
34
I do not think any man/men should participate in this discussion. Nor any for-profit (they all are), religious organization or person. Otherwise, it's like asking slave owners to stop exploiting their slaves.
There is no late-term pregnancy problem. But they will tell you that full-term babies are ripped from irresponsible women's wombs because those lies gain them ill-informed sentimental votes. Even Ireland has embraced legal abortion to preserve women's, children's, families' and communities health.
These Trumpians lie. Trump was ProLife when he could use that. Of course, he was he used his celebrity to bed many women and is known to use force and dislike condoms.
Trump is on a mission to enrich himself, his family and his donor sycophant friends.
If you trust a woman to labor in birth and raise your children, you must trust her to know the full extent of the health and welfare of the family and their community.
24
@Saints Fan, Norma McCorvey never had a pregnancy termination, so it's clear you have no idea what you are talking about. Norma McCorvey was an amoral opportunistic grifter, paid off by known enemies of women's rights, Randall Terry and Flip Benham.
"Norma has never been able to do the right thing,” says her daughter, Melissa. “Never.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/02/norma-mccorvey-roe-v-wade-abortion
3
Our profoundly immoral Trump was called that by the Evangelicals. Now they are clapping and smiling to every word this evil man is saying. The truth is Trump and the whole GOP are anti life by supporting coal and fossil fuels ready to send Americans into wars . Abortion is wrong but God will deal with these bad people . These churches need to start paying yearly taxes . They went a whole century without paying and that is not right i have to pay yearly .
12
@D.j.j.k.
Obama and Bush sent Americans to war. So far, not Trump.
2
President Obama's view on same sex marriage changed in the course of his terms. President Trump's view on abortion changed even before his election, and I fully trust his 'pro-life' stance. Ms. Conway is right, Mr. Trump is the most 'pro-life' president in modern US history.
5
@RMM I am laughing my head off, at these posts, but feel a bit sorry for you. Trump had a fixer ' Michael Cohen', whose job it was to deal with Trump's cast offs, whether a person owed Trump money, or needed an abortion, or was suing him for rape. In his 10 year career, Cohen claimed that he had threatened around 500 different people, organisations, and mobsters, to 'deal' with Trump's mistakes.
You cannot be serious, he could not care less about your issue, it is simply vote buying.
6
I don't think I'll ever understand the goals of the anti-abortion sector. If you force an unwanted baby into such a position , then you bear complete responsibility for the quality and outcome of that life and any other issue surrounding it. After forcing their choice on the mothers, these people disappear almost immediately!
These same people suffer no attacks of conscience while their chosen spokesperson locks children in cages, deprives food stamps from the poor, bilks veterans, utters racist slurs or orders murders to name a few.
Pro-life? Not by any definition I've ever heard!
20
I do not like the way some Catholics seem to equate pro-life with pro-Republican. The Reps just jumped on that and guns ‘cause if they said, “we want to take from the poor and middle class and give to the rich” few would vote fo them. Also, some Dems are pro-life. And finally, if that hypocrite Trump isn’t responsible for numerous abortions I would be quite surprised.
9
Dear Anti-abortion activists,
Notice how I didn’t say “pro-life”? There’s nothing pro life about your support of Trump. The man continues to roll back environmental protections leading to millions of tons of toxic pollutants being released into our environment, causing everything from cancer to respiratory failure, so spare me your non-concern for “life.”
But my main concern is this: most of your leaders who CLAIM to be anti-abortion, encourage the women in their lives to utilize abortion services in secret. None of the families leading the anti-abortion crusade plan to stop utilizing abortion services. This is all about punishing poor women who don’t have the luxury of being able to travel to places where they can access it.
22
@Austin Ouellette
Actually, you did say "pro-life".
In America you cannot enforce your religious belief upon anyone else.
In America you cannot treat any person as a body to be used for others' benefit without that person's consent. (in this case it is partly for the benefit of a more or less organized collection of cells, not even another person)
The anti-choice position is just false to our common sense of human personhood and how and when it comes to be, false to the science, false to philosophy, even false to their own religious text.
It denies the value of the work mothers do that creates human persons after birth
Legally enforcing your religion upon people who don't share it is what the Taliban does. It is what ISIS does.
It is UnAmerican
24
@Christine I'm glad you differentiated human personhood with the corporate personhood given to us by the previous right wing zealots.
In addition to the hypocrisy of Trump’s own behavior, there is also his hypocrisy of calling himself ‘pro life’ while hurting prospects for human survival on our one planet.
16
If I don't have freedom over my body, I don't have any freedom at all. Give blood if you are truly pro life.
14
The man who's gone through life casually picking up women in clubs, cheating on each of his wives (even while the most recent one was pregnant), seems to have no morals but only self gratification as a driving force and his base cheers
13
Here is an interesting one... I am pro-choice and anti-abortion. Abortion is an awful thing and I wish it was still safe, legal and RARE.. heavy emphasis on RARE. But yep, it is your body (and the life of a child) for you to kill. Make no mistake this is the termination of life. But since I am a male you go ahead and destroy a life because I would not even have a say if I was biologically involved in the life growing in a belly.
1
@Mystery Lits
Growing in a belly?
I am not a belly. I, like all women and girls, am a person. Can you please stop using language that ignores women? Do not describe the concept of pregnancy as a fetus growing in a disembodied belly.
I am so glad that President Trump attended the pro-life rally.
The unborn have as much right to life, as those, who have already been born. The president did the right thing.
I am not American, but watching the vicious attempts to destroy him, I am morally prompted to stand by his side. The hate which is endlessly spouting from democrat left is such a repulsive phenomenon, that it threatens to tear down the US in the middle. The leaders of this hate campaign come from a branch of humanity, whose members all have PhD's in the science of hate. Shame on them.
1
@Calgarian
Spend a couple of weeks with him. See if you still think he is who he says he is.
4
@Calgarian, rights (in the US) accrue at BIRTH. Not before.
4
@Calgarian
good for you. stand by him all you want. the biggest source of hate is coming from the president himself.
5
Anyone else enjoy the irony of poisoning the planet while protecting fetuses?
Don’t try to explain it because it’s inexplicable.
32
Trump, the Johnny Come Lately to the abortion fight, will do, will be what ever he needs to do or be in order to help himself. Like Ukraine, I doubt that he cares an "explative" about the unborn.
The unborn are a convenient hostage to his own personal gain.
I'm staunchly against abortion (for scientfic reasons, not religeous) but did not and will not vote for Trump.
The surest way for the eventual Democratic candidate to defeat Trump would be if he or she were against abortion. Then, a lot of voters who are pro-life could in good conscience vote democratic.
1
All those Catholic school teens bused to a rally featuring the most immoral person ever to live in the White House. Then again, the Church, with a conspiracy of silence over decades, has shown moral corruption that would have put gigantic corporations out of business.
16
If this doesn’t mobilize MY BASE, I fear nothing will. C’mon people! Like Hamilton said, “Rise up!”
4
What about a march for the child abuse victims of the church first? These evangelical protesters hanging on to Trump want to save the unborn but don't care about the children already born and being abused, in foster care because of opioid addicted parents. What about the church spending some time and money on the blighted & forgotten towns of America instead of taking a false message to Africa or India with billions of money to bribe for souls!
14
Is there any position Trump won't take if it gets him the big votes - big gun rights, big business, big real estate, big Pharma, big industry, big religion, big oil, big coal? The man is a wind vane pointing to wherever the big power goes. Of course that leaves out the big climate crisis, and the big part of the American population that doesn't own vast amount of stocks or businesses or real estate. It leaves out women and children and the environment because that is not where the big political power resides. Trump is an utter disgrace of a human being and should never have become our president.
5
@Middle of the road
Your comment has nothing to do with the point I made. Trump and his GOP followers are only out to amass power, irrespective of what is good for America.
4
I rode the DC Metro downtown this morning with a group of college-age kids, mostly male, who were headed to the march. I wanted to ask, Are you all abstaining from sex?
20
@10009 I am pro-life and abstained in college.
The irony is that the same group of scoundrels is also anti contraceptions, the best tool to prevent abortion, while pushing to cut programs that support mothers and children after they are born.
12
Trump couldn’t care less about abortion. But he’s united the hate of the white male religious right who bow to him as their ‘lord and savior’ from democracy and equality for women.
9
Late term abortions are rare- a lie the Times returns to regularly. One percent makes them rare? One percent of
approximately 862,000 (abortion tally for 2017, per Guttmacher) is 8620 a year. That almost 24 a day, one an hour. Twenty children were murdered at Sandy Hook. If that happened every day, would we call it a rare occurrence? It is, however, a small proportion of the tsunami of innocent blood spilled every year in this country and around the world. But, if they're not really people, then everything is fine...
1
@Hunt
actually for 2019 it went down. pregnancy I mean. don't know how many but it has dropped. and actually don't bring up gun violence since the number of children since sandy hook has gone up.
1
Inequality in fare wages , helping the poor, the disadvantaged,
those with mental balance problems, vets, those less fortunate refugees, and the equal rights and protections of women recognizing their unique role in giving birth and doing everything to help them except abortion unless necessary for direct health of mother and/or in cases of rape.
The saddest part is that the participants in the March for Life seem to sincerely believe the Big Lie at the core of the pro-life movement.
Namely, that when the last abortion-clinic gets shut down, there will be no more abortions.
11
I'm pro life -- that is, for the sake of my life and my country's, I'm in favor of seeing Trump aborted from the presidency.
14
Ah the freedom to force others to follow your personal ideology. 2000 years later and the bible is still sticking it to humans.
4
If you care about life, you should care about the environment in which it grows.
Will you also march for increased education funding, universal healthcare, and against poverty? Will you march to improve social security and medicare for those who are alive but old?
Do you really care about life, after birth?
2
You don’t end abortions legislatively (Or judicially), you end safe abortions.
5
There can't possibly BE a GOD or she would have precluded this demagogue from ruining our country! The damage he has done will be forever in too many cases. The tribalism and division, the environment, our international standing, we have lost our way, and he is proof of it!
5
@Alan Read the old testament. Retaliatory, dictatorial, petty, cruel, egocentric, doesn't even begin to describe god's character. It's a horror story.
1
Trump has pandered his way to the White House. I doubt Donald is personally against abortion.
4
Certain people make me pray for retroactive contraceptives.
Seriously.
10
@Phyliss Dalmatian: ...and that's a pro-life stance? Or does "pro-life" mean only for people you agree with?
It is a testament to the strength of the pro life movement that it has endured and grown stronger for 47 years. There have been great strides made and it is due to the pro life folks within the movement. It proves that things can be achieved when people band together. This is just the beginning.
3
The anti-choice hasn't grown. It's outsized influence has, but a woman's right to choose still has the overwhelming majority.
11
What is pro life about Trump’s policies? Apart from taking a woman’s right to decide on issues related to her own body.
8
@KMW
yes 47 yrs the other day. cant wait to see in june if SCOTUS will rule to let public monies also be given to religious and private schools.
1
Like a shepherd with his sheep, Trump is guiding his most hardcore supporters to the voting booth by doing this. It is clearly a no brainer.
231
@Anne Most of the attendees are high school kids who can’t vote
8
@Anne, Yes I agree, he doesn't really care about this, all he cares about is his base of voters, don't make him out to be some hero.
14
@Anne
Of course it is just Trump politics as usual. We should ask instead how many abortions he has CAUSED in his self-indulgent playboy career.
35
If he were interested in life then he wouldn’t cut ACA , food stamps and respond to climate change.
661
@Mickey
Go tell that to the idiots who applaud and support him.
50
@Mickey Agreed, and he also would take on and dismantle the NRA!
44
@Mickey:
Any government that can force you to have a child, can force you not to have one (see China). Be careful what you wish for and what rights you're willing to give away, like your healthcare.
3
What happens within a women’s body is that women’s own choice.
55
@Anaya Why not be responsible and if you can't afford or not ready for a baby, don't do the things that create another human life in your body
2
@Anaya Correct, if we are talking about an arm, leg, or whatever. But we are talking about a human life inside of her.
3
@Anaya
Yes, it is. Women can best evaluate their family's, their communities and their personal capabilities and financial needs. Pregnancy, labor, birth and 18+ years of each child support are left to women to plan.
I think young families' health is an essential goal. Men should have basic reproduction sexual health access as well. Ask the CDC.
Closing family planning clinics, a republican goal in especially poor communities have been too successful. Because angry men make the laws that gut public services.
10
Trump is a terrible president for many reasons, but especially b/c he does not consider any other perspectives beyond the issues his base supports. In this sense, he is president of his base, and he disregards all other beliefs and valid opinions.
42
Women please Don’t let other people choose the faith of our bodies.
19
I wish commenters would cease calling him 'cruel'. Cruelty is a calculated vice, whereas Trump's frontal lobe doesn't handle moral judgment, only moral transgression, which he commits blindly, as a survival tic. I haven't heard of him processing "virtue" as opposed to vice.
Trump is a bad orange-tinted reader of bad scripts.
14
@Tara :
Ignorance may not be cruelty, but for the victims, it might as well be.
2
'March for Life of Some' would be a better name since the pro-lifers rarely consider important the lives of those on death row nor the lives of children, separated from their mothers and fathers and left to rot in unlivable conditions.
42
@Middle of the road
First, what about the commandment, thou shall not kill. The United States is the only Western country to still use the death penalty!
Second, what about all the mistakes made that cannot be undone after death.
Third, I am NOT part of the Left. But in this case, I'd be proud to be if it means curtailing state sanctioned murders.
3
Trump is the definition of hypocrisy.
49
One month into his presidency, when I gave up on Trump as a decent, honorable, intelligent leader, I also realized that his greatest enemy was himself. I had witnessed a huge disconnect between his brain and his mouth and given the huge ego construct of the man and it's compensatory origin, I concluded that it would be Trump who would destroy Trump. Now he stands on a gallows of his own making, noose tight around his lying neck and he's fallen through to Ignominy. This is a fair and just sentence given his ego construct. For the emotive, the poorly educated, the riff-raff and rabble, the dupes and stooges that support Trump, ignominy means: public shame or disgrace.
19
@HoodooVoodooBlood Correction: there is no "disconnect between his brain and his mouth". as you mentioned above. The junk he speaks is exactly what his brain processes.
Unfortunately the GOP gladly bare his weight on their shoulders, determined not to let him drop.
I'd like to know what percentage of pro-lifers support the death penalty.
30
@Acey Yes!!!
AND gun control.
2
@Acey I do because most of the people on death row did horrible things unlike innocent babies that have no fault of their own except the irresponsibility of the parents who did the things that made the woman pregnant
President Trump says that he is only in favor of abortion when a married man impregnates a one-night-stand or a mistress, and the life of the husband may be at risk.
81
The idea that Donald Trump is pro-life is ludicrous.
71
If he was the one that was forced to birth, he would most definitely be on the other side of that argument. White men legislating women’s bodies. Control and oppression. “Please Daddy, I will die if I am forced to carry this fetus... I ask your permission to not die.” The Dark Ages 2.0. Using religion to oppress.
Freedom: If you don’t want or need a medical procedure, don’t have said medical procedure, period!
16
Evangelicals are frauds. The choose Trump over their Christian values. My values would not let me condone or support anything that Trump does contrary to my faith and the Constitution. How can you condone caging children who are here in the world but yet you are crusaders of the unborn.
46
@Kingsley Arthur Rowe ;
Oh, I thought you meant they are hurting so many people for something that does not appear at all in the Bible.
I wonder the number of anti-abortionists that have gone the full month by adopting unwanted children.
10
These folks are very worked up about the rights of the unborn. Its the born they don't care about.
32
Anti-choice March. Correct language matters.
25
Trump : Women must get “ some form of punishment “ for having abortions. IT’S ON TAPE. Left unsaid is any consequences for the Men that impregnated them.
NOVEMBER.
73
@Phyliss Dalmatian If men get no say in the abortion... they carry no responsibility.
1
@Phyliss Dalmatian So long as men get no say in the abortion of their child... they will take no consequences.
1
I support choice.
However, I do hope all the commenters here have thanked their mothers for choosing not to abort them.
2
It wouldn’t matter to me. My mother had me when she was 17 and unmarried. She suffered.
6
@Mon Ray
My mother was forced into a teenaged marriage to a man who left her for weeks on end with no money for food for me or for her. Her education was cut short and she was underemployed for many years. I have no doubt her life would have been better if she had finished school and achieved the higher education she was intellectually capable of. She finally went to university as a senior citizen and was on the dean's list. I harbour no illusions that my birth was necessary and wish she had not been forced to be a mother before she was ready. She didn't have a choice and made the best of it. It only matters if she thought I was worth it but I don't hold it against her if she secretly wishes her life had gone differently.
6
@Mon Ray if my mother had a headache on the night I was conceived, I would not have existed. So who should I thank? Aspirin? I did not exist prior to my birth. This common meme of forced-birth proponents is so totally ridiculous that their constant use of it only emphasizes their intellectual poverty‘.
6
Not sure who are the bigger hypocrites, Trump or those at this rally showering him with praise.
23
Abortion is the law of the land. Naturally, this potus wants to break the law if possible! I mean what did you expect? Still represent the minority and ride roughshod over the majority!
If he had any respect for women..., well I don't have to complete this hypothetical sentence!!
10
These folks were raised to believe a life begins at conception and that if you don’t fight to end what you’re told is a genocide, you yourself will be held responsible by your creator, and you will not enjoy everlasting life in heaven. There’s no parallel value that applies to actual living human beings, that’s when the Christians make an about-face and worship at the alter of “personal responsibility” and blame the poor and disadvantaged for their own plight. The foundation is one of selfishness, they are trying to save their own souls, not babies. And they wonder why secularism is on the rise...what thinking person could not find this hypocritical and repugnant? And on top of that, they want to see laws that don’t give tax dollars to organizations who so much as hand out a brochure about pregnancy termination, but also want laws that send tax dollars and give tax breaks to private religious schools that teach children homosexuality is a sin and can be “fixed” if you just try hard enough. I don’t get to stipulate I’d prefer my tax contributions not support war or torture. This is not a “Christian nation” yet the Christians want what amounts to Christian-style Shariah Law.
27
@Diane That's an incredible broad stroke of a brush for 1.5 billion people. You might want to rethink your blatant generalization
Ever the pitch-man, trump, our carnival-barker-in-chief, will be selling trump-branded apparel at the march.
Anyone who thinks this man has a moral objection to abortion is dumber than a sack of potatoes. This is about green-backs.
17
Trump is the first president to speak at the rally makes perfect sense. He's probably the first president to finance at least one abortion in his lifetime. How many mistresses has this clown had? There has got to be at least one abortion in his past.
26
@Rogue 1303 :
Perhaps. You really think Trump would pay for it?
I mean, why would he?
3
Are we in the Middle-Ages? Scary to see that many lunatics, backed by the US president.
14
A married man who had unprotected sex with a porn star he just met - and almost certainly with dozens if not hundreds of other women - has become a one of the great champions of the anti-abortion movement. What a truly bizarre time in this nation's history.
59
It appears the Panderer in Chief would attend a rally of 100 million predators if that would ensure he wins.
17
@Tony - Why not - He has no compunction about nominating one for the Supreme Court.
4
What a shameless joke by this philanderer, conman trump.
I’ve lived in NYC since 1980 and I can assure you trump’s multiple wifes, porn star girl friends, and other assorted women have had more than a few abortions over the years.
And even more pathetic are the “Christians” who have sold their morals and souls to this conman in exchange for packing the Supreme Court with biased judges against the women’s equal rights.
26
Where are all these protesters when it comes to abolishing the death penalty? Is only fetal life sacred and are only fetuses entitled to the right to life?
17
@wihikr
Yes, and only fetuses up to 'just before birth'. For conservatives all children are on their own, from one second after birth.
2
Trump admitted (boasted?) to Howard Stern that he paid for 21 abortions.
15
Really? Show me the reference.
As if we needed more proof what a disgusting bunch of hypocrites these people are. There is no one they would not align themselves with in seeking to control women, their bodies and their futures. Don't forget though, these reactionaries are the minority in this country. We need to vote, we need to vote pro-choice and we need to send them back to the abyss they came from.
11
I am sad that the NY times buys into the spin of these people who oppose abortion. To have a headline that repeats the false claim that these folks 'march for life' when these folks oppose so much that is on behalf of the living is an abdication of journalist responsibility. They may march for the unborn to life but they dont support the end of the death penalty, the human rights of refugee children to food and medical care that would extend their lives, or the end of other life ending things like guns.
They are hypocrites and single issue zealots.
16
Breaking: President Who Supports Abortion in Personal Affairs Now Against Abortion for Public Votes
17
It's highly likely that a man who has lived the playboy's life that Trump has might be responsible for a few abortions himself. Especially considering his documented penchant for unprotected sex. Lots of NDAs out there and people willing to cover up for him (Elliott Broidy). Wondering what else got burned up in David Pecker's safe — just sayin'.
7
I would really like to know how many abortions Trump has paid for over the years. How many fetuses with his genetic material have been destroyed.
8
One has to wonder how many abortions Trump paid for over the years, desperate to hide his womanizing.
8
“I am very pro-choice” - Donald Trump
Evangelicals are sheep to this wolfs political pandering. Disgraceful.
11
"Con man with dozens of abortions he paid for speaks to folls at march"
That would be a more realistic title.
Don Dump should be impeached for this violation of separation of State and Superstition alone.
9
Of course he did. Because he is such a great altruistic humanitarian. Same way he helped the clown prince cover up the pre meditated murder of a journalist and citizen. Sad and laughable at the same time.
7
Vomitous hypocrisy.
14
They're so fixated on the idea or just the words anti abortion and pro life but very little thought or foresight on the lives after birth.
Humans being born into miserable conditions in an environment, home or family that may not be capable or even care to raise them in a loving, caring manner....because these bible thumpers want to please their gawd and "promote" themselves into some higher level in their mythological afterlife.
6
And so the extremist anti-abortion zealots have taken over the White House.
8
Whoops: anti-choice!
1
The fair weather antiabortionist really adds credibility to their desire of a handmaiden state . What a match made in heaven that can only produce beelzebub.
4
Protect that fetus but once they are out of the womb they are on their own.
9
@Zoenzo the parent should be responsible. If they are unwilling or not ready to bring a life into this world, don't do the things that get you pregnant. Better than ending the precious life of a child with a beating heart
@GI Joe
A zygote doesn’t have a beating heart. Brush up on biology.
I repeat: women are taped and often , the world over.
Is that what you call being responsible?
2
Begs the question how many abortions Donald Trump has been responsible for throughout his illustrious career of adultery
8
Given the anti abortionTrump's history as a sexual predator, I am curious as top how many pregnancy terminations he may have paid for.
6
The "religious" are fools to fall for this charlatan.
6
These pro-lifers and most Republicans and for sure Trumpolini care about life until you are conceived. After that, you are basically screwed if it were up to them. No healthcare guaranteed, no maternity or paternity leave, poor education, environmental protection which also means protecting our health becoming the destruction of our air, water, climate etc. And the list goes on. And yet, people keep voting against their own interests. There must be something in their water (yes, it may be polluted...).
5
Anyone dumb and gullible enough to think trump gives a damn about abortions, other than having to pay for one now and then, is already voting for him. That 30% of the populations (the ignorant, fearful, uniformed, uneducated) have always been a lock for trump. He will lose more votes than he will gain from attending this fanatic fest.
11
@MadisonSteve I don't care if he cares about abortions or paid for 18 in his life. I care about his actions now such as packing the court with lifetime appointments that will hopefully one day end the genocide of babies in America
Pro-Choice advocates argue that pro-life supporters should adopt all the unwanted babies born if abortion is banned.
My question: do you pro-choicers house, feed, and support those who are victims of sexual abuse or violence? If not, you MUST approve of sexual violence, right?
If you want to argue the merits of abortion, fine. But lets use logical and rational arguments.
2
@WVD
As a matter of fact, YES, I support and advocate for victims of sexual abuse or violence. Your argument is just a smoke-screen, to avoid responsibility. There are thousands of foster children in the system, whose parents could not care for them: how many have you assisted?
5
@WVD
You're confused.
The point of the argument that you are misunderstanding is that anti-choicers are forcing women to accept burdens that women consider unacceptable and are advocating policies that place children into a position of harm (being born to women and men who cannot or will not raise a child). Therefore, if they are interested in advancing such policies, they should be willing to alleviate the burdens they are causing and should be willing to accept similar burdens themselves.
When you ban abortion, you force a woman to endure burdens of bearing and raising children she doesn't want. No one is forcing anyone else to endure any burden by banning sexual abuse or violence.
Your analogy fails.
6
The man with no ethics courting the religious extremist vote because that is the only way he can stay afloat politically. The US is in dire straits.
110
Not surprising. One more nail in the coffin for his re-election efforts. A majority of voters support a woman's right to choose.
23
@Mary A If what you say is true, then a majority of women are complicit in murder.
1
@Mary A A majority in places like New York and California, where the vote is already accounted for. Thinking in terms of "national majorities" is what lost the election in 2016.
If these people are so vehemently pro-life, why are so many of them against the ACA, which guarantees health care for all?
45
Not a clue. This also applies to “pro-life” and guns.
6
These ladies should follow up their good deed by volunteering to provide daycare and enacting legislation which allows a mother to stay home with her children, (like they did), and not enacting welfare reform with Newt Gingrich. He, an opponent of federal assistance, was recently invited to participate in Sonny Perdue’s podcast extolling the virtues of stripping low wage workers of food stamps. These people should be in jail for cruelty against man.
17
I’m sitting in Union Station right now and the place is packed with the pro-lifers: 80% are young men (shipped in from schools no doubt) and priests because, as we all know, that demographics has the deep knowledge and compassion to decide what women need.
84
This lies at the core of what I most despise about Trump: he doesn't have an ideology-he just does what is in his own best interest. Or, perhaps, doing what is in his own best interest all the time is his ideology. Who really believes he is against abortion? My secret desire is that someone will manage to uncover evidence that he got one (or more) of his mistresses pregnant and pressured her to have an abortion. Anybody who sees him for what he really is knows full well that this has probably happened.
19
@Leo
Do you really think any minds of his fans would be changed by evidence of his paying for abortion? In fact, there are some of the 'good ol' boys' who'd applaud him: it's only a woman, after all.
1
@JD Athey You may be correct about that, but I think the real reason his fans wouldn't care is because it's not Trump that they care about; it's what they perceive Trump to be doing for them that they care about. The sad part of this is that he isn't really doing much of anything for them. In that way, he is just like his Republican predecessors. He talks the talk, but in the end his real game is making sure the rich stay rich-most of all himself.
These same ‘pro-life’ advocates willingly tolerate 35,000 fatal gunshot wounds per year, many thousands more maimed for life. Millions go hungry; millions go without a roof over their heads; desperate migrants are vilified and held in cages, their children torn from their arms. Maternal and infant mortality in this country is on the rise; life expectancy is falling; the suicide rate, especially among the white male rural ‘base’ that supports this Trumpian ‘pro-life’ posturing, is soaring.
I could listen to the ‘pro-life’ argument were it not painfully apparent that ‘life,’ as they define it, ends at the moment of birth. These folks are not ‘pro-life’ at all. they are monomaniacally fixated on the notion of the egg, the sperm, the embryo and the fetus as ‘living things’ - while utterly blind to the living, breathing human beings all around them. At the extremes, they have assassinated other living, breathing humans in furtherance of ‘the sanctity of life.’ Many would sacrifice the health and life of the mother to avoid the medically necessary termination of a pregnancy. And tellingly, when push comes to shove, we have seen the most rabid, vocal ‘pro-life’ advocates turn to abortion as the solution to an inconvenient, unwanted pregnancy.
Enough. This is madness; and this irrational, primitive, superstitious, quasi-religious dogma should have no place in our political discourse and public policy. The Constitution mandates separation of church and state. So separate them. Now.
80
What a farce. Do the participants believe he's a believer, the guy who takes up with prostitutes and porn stars while married? Trump the party boy doesn't give a hoot if anyone gets an abortion or not, and probably every marcher knows that. So that makes them what, exactly, as they march on, claiming they speak for a greater good?
Btw, other presidents probably actually understood and upheld the fundamental principle of separation of church and state. An American president at such a march isn't fulfilling their duty as president. So we circle back to where we started, the farce of Trump.
587
@PS another reason to impeach him, he’s violated the principle of separation of church and state.
49
@PS
Be careful what you wish for...or, put another way: do not overplay your hand.
Natalie Schafer did the "Gilligan's Island" pilot for the trip to Hawaii and the paycheck, convinced that the show was so stupid that it would never be picked up. To her mortification, it was, and is in reruns sixty years later.
To the 200 Republican congressmen who petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:
Roe v. Wade holds your party together. Republicans can be "pro-life", never having to take an impactful vote. Without Roe, we will see intra-party combat shred the GOP.
Minorities have an abortion incidence of three times that of whites (see https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-race-and-ethnicity). White Republican mothers will always know how to help their distressed daughters, but Republicans need Roe to preclude a minority voter tsunami, and a "blue" Indiana or Ohio or Missouri, 20 years hence.
Again: Be careful what you wish for.
20
@PS "Other presidents probably actually understood and upheld the fundamental principle of separation of church and state."
Trump neither understands nor cares about either church or state, let alone the importance of keeping them separate.
12
I would like to know an estimate of how many people attended this rally.
8
@BG
Don't ask Trump! You'll get a number inflated by a factor of ten.
Remember, the Right Wing Zealots believe that it wrong and unconstitutional to require you to have health insurance, but they believe that is their obligation for force women to give birth. Without insurance if need be.
"We don't have the power to require you to have insurance but we do have to power to require you to have a baby, even against your will or even against your well being or health."
Interesting paradox, no?
55
It is not a 'March For Life'.
It is a march for forced birth and the control of women.
It's what the pro-fetus people have always been about.
67
Thanks for avoiding "pro-life" in the lede, but "anti-choice" would be better- that's the truth. It's a war on women!
36
In the interest of stimulating a more honest public debate about abortion, the Times and other media outlets should be collecting and disseminating information about political, religious and other public figures who are publicly opposed to abortion, but who have had them or helped other people to obtain them.
12
@A.Stanton - That’s not journalism. That’s taking sides. Besides, abortion is a deeply personal matter and it should be a personal decision to make it public. I support a woman’s right to chose but I also support a woman’s right to privacy. However, if every woman who had ever had an abortion made it public, people would be astonished at how many. Without the choice of a legal abortion, many, many women will die from botched back-street illegal abortions. Is this what anti-abortion people want, because that is what will happen - again.
2
Trump has done more to express contempt for life in all its myriad forms than any other president in my lifetime.The "pro-life" movement would be more plausible if it expressed even a modicum of concern for those who have already been born, both in and out of Trump's cages.
35
I guess "pro-life" does not mean "anti-guns who's only goal is killing people". The level of hypocrisy is overwhelming.
42
Has Trump been Pro-Life?
Or is this his ploy for the election?
7
@uji10jo
If you have to ask, you've haven't been paying attention.
2
@uji10jo When he was just Citizen Trump he supported women’s right to choose.
4
@Rosemarie McMichael Well, politicians and lawyers switch positions. Alan Derschowitz and
Lyndsey Graham changed their position on impeachable offences from their position at Clinton trial. Trump? I don't know what to believe.
"I'm totally pro-choice. I want to see the abortion issue removed from politics. I believe it is a personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors."
-- Donald Trump
46
@JP You prove my guess was right! Morality and ethics never reside with Trump. Just a ploy.
6
He’s only doing it for the votes... his support is another lie. He couldn’t care less about this issue.
19
@denise falcone
What he does care about is winning the election, and having the power to transform our democracy into one-man hereditary rule. Imagine all of us subject to his daily whims. We each should hope not to own something he or his cronies covet.
1
Only America's supremely cognitively dissonant 'conservative' Christians could put Jesus Christ and Donald Trump in the same messianic boat.
Note to religious cults: It's a country, not a church.
Note to female citizens: the right-wing Republican War On Women continues unabated.
Note to American Christians: Would Jesus cut taxes on millionaires while ripping healthcare away from the poor, the sick, the old and the weak like Trump and the GOP is ?
November 3 2020
Register and vote in record numbers, America.
228
Language matters. Call it an "anti-choice" rally, which is what it is.
20
Forced birthers.
3
For myself, I would prefer “March for Theocracy.”
3
This guy's all the focus is for his re-election. Nothing else.
8
Our POTUS continues to be a "barrier breaking" president.
Now that he has attended this really - really, the question is why not any previous POTUS?
I happened to be in DC for 3 presidential inaugurations - all Republicans to be sure.
The last one was W first inauguration.
Having stayed over - I happened to get to mingle with these marchers.
As some have commented below - as the marches go these days - or rather unlike today's marches - these folks are well behaved.
Of course, this is an election year.
And I am just now watching Days of Impeachment after watching POTUS at this rally.
Everything is politics of course.
But that's what makes ours the best of democracy.
I think future POTUS will thank this one for having broken this 5aboomif not attending these marches.
After all, these are just as Americans as any others.
And their cause is American cause.
2
@Neil The Pro Life main goal is to take away Women's choice. By Definition; pro life would promote anything helping life survive. Trump took away SNAP(food) from poor people right before Christmas. Trump promotes Coal and Fossil Fuels; proven carcinogens that cause cancer and shorten life. 7 Million Americans have lost health care since Trump made it harder to get insurance.Today Trump threatened 10 Million more Americans in Cali with no health care.The first bill Trump signed allowed people with mental illness to have guns. Guns;guns that kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. Pro Life "Should" mean helping people live longer;not shorter. Trump is anti life;pro Trump
6
By the way if elected he plans to gut social security, medicare, medicaid and helping Americans in any way. The rich will get all the help. Vote Democratic 2020, unless the dictator is thrown out of office before.
11
@Sues Someone
Better vote Democrat regardless. I will never trust any Republican after this.
1
The so called March forLife and Mr. Trump’s support are just one more assault on women’s rights. Those who shout the loudest against abortion are endorsing men’s freedom to impregnate women and avoid taking responsibility for any baby born of the unwanted pregnancy. If these marchers genuinely cared about life, then they would provide health care, safe housing, quality education and child care for the new life. And what about the woman who must endure pregnancy and birth? Not all women want to be mothers, and certainly few men are up to the task of responsible fatherhood.
13
Trump’s decision to attend this annual pro-life event is Trump at its best. All previous pro-life Presidents no doubt chose not to attend because their handlers and others told them it was not politically expedient. But Trump does what he thinks is right and no doubt his handlers tried to persuade him not to attend. But he did attend and, given just how successful his contrarian political instincts have been, its likely he made a good move politically.
2
@ehillesum, just don't think too hard about what it means to have someone like Trump as the standard-bearer for the "pro-life" cause.
8
At the identification of an unwanted pregnancy, use DNA testing to identify the father, either at birth or at termination. Make the father pay 20 percent of his income for 18 years to pay for the child’s upbringing and pay half his salary for 1 year to the mother.
This would bring all unwanted pregnancies down to near zero.
11
@Toms Quill
Excellent idea, I'd vote for that.
I still like the sign, which wasn't blurred in the National Archives exhibit, that read, "If my uterus could shoot bullets, it would be less regulated."
23
Please do not refer to this movement as "pro life". The March for Life group might gain some credibility if it included fighting against the death penalty, providing for support for citizens dying homeless in the streets, giving assistance to poverty-stricken children doomed to shrunken life expectancies, etc. Until then, it is pretty clearly a narrow-focus movement to restrict women from controlling their lives-probably a lot easier than facing the totality of really being pro life.
7
Does this mean conception will be illegal soon too? The premise of these people is that God doesn't give us the right to end or prevent life. America's historic anti-Catholics are rolling in their graves as the United States becomes more aligned with Roman Catholic doctrine every day. On second thought, no, that would mean no capital punishment and American women would have to refrain from sexual intercourse while they are of childbearing age unless they want children.
Ultimately the point being missed by Trump and his addlepated followers is that separating church and state keeps variable and changing religious norms of one faith or faiths dominating and interfering with the religious (or no religious) beliefs of others. I have never met anyone who thinks abortion is good. No one I know who has had an abortion considers it easy. But we live in a secular society and you can be anti-abortion but pro-choice. The alternative is worse. What are we doing to make contraception easier to access? What are we teaching students about sex in school?
7
@Mack
Good point, and that's the rub. Many if not most 'pro-lifers' are also against contraception (except for abstinence). And that shows their real focus: what they really object to is anyone having 'sex without consequences' (even if the consequence is death).
5
The cynicism of Trump's "position" on abortion can not be overstated. As any intellectually-honest observer of his statements and behavior throughout his career knows: Trump does not care whether abortion is legal or not. But as it's to his political advantage claim to be anti-choice, he will lie, demagogue, and say and do anything he thinks will help him (and him alone) on the topic.
8
Trump did not loose single vote by attending this rally. Showing respect for and acknowledging those at the rally, he probably kept a few and gained a few.
3
What happened to 'pro-choice' Trump?
This seems to be pure political pandering.
9
Why aren't more anti-choice devotees favoring stronger gun control laws? Trump is against gun control yet claims he's pro-life. Every day in America there is a mass shooting. That's where four or more people are shot in one incident. Every single day. Why aren't Trump and the anti-choice marchers marching for gun control?
11
no wealthy woman will ever bear a pregnancy she doesn't want to continue. the younger and poorer a woman is, the more the republican control over women's bodies affect her.
14
Statistically, in 2005 a little less that 7% of all abortions were performed because of concern for the mother's health. Some recent stats have the numbers at half that. The propaganda that abortions are all about the mother's health is blown all out of proportion. Even figuring in abortions performed because of rape, it still stands that over 90% are out of convenience. Yes, to many people this is a religious issue...but is concern over human life because of religious convictions bad? To many of us, myself included, this is far beyond a religious issue. It is simply murder. The ending of a human life (heart beating, brain waves, recognition of sensory experiences...) that has done nothing other than being conceived is out and out murder and I see no reason why any politician who claims to have concern for this nation would not want to support this march.
1
@Chris
Cool, cool, cool. Just some rando internet user saying all women who seek abortion services should be sent to prison. How very compassionate of you to desire to send women who have done nothing wrong to prison. Lots of compassion you have there.
4
@Chris: A factual example of an inconvenience is misplacing your car keys.
Childbirth (more than 13x more dangerous and risky than a safe and legal pregnancy termination) is not in any way a simple "inconvenience". It has risks up to and including the permanent disability of, or death of, the pregnant woman. No one should be forced into gestating a pregnancy to term against her will. And parenthood, one of the most important responsibilities, is not in any way a simple "inconvenience".
8
It’s none of your business. It’s my body, not yours. Why don’t you try advocating for live children whose food stamps and health care have been cut.
I realize they aren’t fetuses but how about marching for children torn from the arms of their poor desperate mothers and thrown in cages? Their lives are ruined.
Forced birthers are hypocrites.
5
It's really a shame that Fred and Mary didn't go with the pro-choice option.
16
@RDM
I pray for retroactive Contraception. And I’m Atheist.
4
This only makes sense since Trump has so much more at stake than the average first trimester fetus in the fight to deny women control over their own bodies.
3
Trump has been lavishing attention on Evangelicals since the Christianity Today piece last month revealed a fracture in their opinion of him. When I read of their 99% approval rating I referred to my Probabilities 101 course and saw how such a result is statistically absurd, especially since it has been constant for 3 years. Trump fears losing any of these folk because it would spell disaster. Since he will lose some of the 2016 Independent voters he needs to retain everyone else. I maintain that something like his profane and profaner rally speeches , innocuous to most of us, could be the reason he loses those votes. And the photos of his several spiritual advisors laying on hands as Trump barely controls his smirk, should be enough to turn off others.
7
One has to acknowledge Trump is a supreme opportunist.
Who knows how many abortions he has paid for over his years of philandering, but it seems he has found personal salvation in a Pro-Life stance, at least for now.
8
The Pro Life crowd continue their support of children in the womb. Once a baby takes their first breath outside the womb, their care for the child evaporates.
Surly the Pro Life crowd should support better public health, education and housing. Raising the minimum wage would also assist new moms.
If they supported more spending on sex education in schools, that would have a bigger impact on lowering abortions, than their narrow Christian focussed perspective.
13
I am not a Trump fan, but I give him credit for taking the issue of abortion head on and attending this rally.
I also give the New York Times credit for addressing this very important moral issue. More thoughtful debate is in order.
3
freddy 16
No, the issue does not require or warrant further debate, thoughtful or otherwise. It was resolved 47 years ago when the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution protects a pregnant woman's decision to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.
Roe v Wade, 1973.
Trump and his religious cohorts are working hard to overturn an existing S.C. decision and now have Barr to help them. It seems that all this administration does is overturn previously passed laws affecting our quality of life. In between golfing and tweeting.
3
Why are fetuses more important than living children?
5
How so called pro lifers can support the man personally behind policies that endorse ripping children from their parents' arms, throwing them in cases without beds, blankets, or toothbrushes, indefinitely, in some cases never to be reunited with their families again, and in some cases to die defies reason. Hypocrisy is too weak a word to describe this outrageous inconsistency.
9
It's great to see President Trump and many prominent GOP attend this prolife rally. Most of these "Pro-abortion advicates" dont even realize how horrific this procedure is when viewed on an ultrasound. Life is the greatest gift of all and should be cherished and not treated as, "a choice"!
2
So let cut food stamps! Let’s not not raise the minimum wage! Let’s make health care so expensive that no one can afford it! Lets embrace our AK15s and fight against all gun control!
Let’s tear those toddlers from the arms of their poor desperate mothers and throw them in cages! Ruin their lives! Yes!
5
The only women who will suffer from having Roe V Wade overturned will be women of little economic means. Wealthy women and the men who impregnate them will be able to travel to another country to terminate their pregnancies. Maybe we should make it illegal for any American citizen to obtain an abortion any where in the world. Let's see how the elected officials like that idea. They are paid well and will always have more options than those whose only alternative is a back-ally abortion.
8
Trump continues to assume his political standing is made of Teflon. There is a reason why all past Republican presidents have kept this march at arm's length.
24
@The Buddy. We shall see. So far, he has been very successful flaunting conventional wisdom and it is quite likely this choice will succeed as well.
3
When one doesn't share religious beliefs, but, indeed, finds it appalling that such attachments to fairies and invisible magic beings are still found in 2020, one wonder where people get the chutzpah to seek to destroy the lives of many women who either don't share those beliefs or indeed can't survive a or another pregnancy.
88
@MacIver - It may be they have a higher opinion of there fellow citizens than you have expressed. They are simply expressing thier opinion.
2
@MacIver You are entitled to your beliefs or non-beliefs but when you also choose to belittle the beliefs of others all that does is show that you are both intolerant of those who do not follow/believe what you do and one who has a closed mind. There is much that science cannot explain not just about religion and miracles but just in every day life. And even if there was a belief that science explained it we have and are seeing where science is having to rethink its positions/theories. A prime example is now the questioning of the base premise of the big bang theory. Many scientists have struggled to reconcile the idea of everything starting from that infitismal point, the math simply does not work. Now there are theories such as the big bounce.
Science will never explain everything. Who is to say that one's belief is right or wrong in the absence of incontrovertible evidence proving a position? If nothing else it means our minds should remain open and to not dismiss those ideas that are different from ours. The earth was once both flat and at the center of the universe according to many very smart people.
1
No. It’s the woman’s body and it’s entirely her decision. Not yours.
4
Whatever this rally achieves, it will never stop abortion. Women have been voluntarily ending unwanted pregnancies for centuries and will continue to do so, regardless of the consequences. Should Roe be overturned (doubtful due to the fundraising both parties get from this divisive issue), expect the next push will be against contraception. The fundamentalists won’t rest until they ensure women lose power over themselves & men are in control as “‘God intended’”. The Republicans have successfully demagogued this issue with their draconian & false information, demonizing women & health care providers over a decision that is nobody else’s business.
193
@Ruthanne It continually amazes me that there are women who are against the right to choose. Don't they know that they are condemning themselves to a life of second-class citizenry when they allow others (mostly white men) make decisions for them about their own bodies and lives? Sickens me to my core when I see these self-destructive women out there acting like slaves.
19
@Ruthanne
They didn’t win. They are the minority mob using a rigged system that benefits them at our expense.
We in blue states if necessary must consider leaving the union if necessary to end being abused and has-lighted by such people.
1
Trump continues to assume his political standing is made of Teflon. There is a reason why all past Republican presidents have kept this march at arm's length.
4
I would argue that a President now seen as toxic by the majority of Americans may not in the end be helpful to your cause. Especially Abortion Rights which in any poll I have seen an overwhelming majority support.
Evangelical Christians and Pro Life organization are not representative of most Americans, why then do the media give these fringe groups so much attention.
This gathering despite Trumps appearance is in my view not that newsworthy.
28
And how many of those women get in a voting booth and secretly vote the way that would horrify their husbands and pastors? I have the feeling it’s more than we may imagine. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part...
2
@Alec They are not fringe groups. They do make up a material portion of the population and voters. Fringe groups are like Antifa.
@DC, WWII was fought because the Allies were anti-fascist. Nothing "fringe" about opposing fascism - it's patriotic to oppose fascism.
1
If only they would mind their own lives and not interfere in the lives of others. The same anti-abortionists are the ones who chastised those who require state and federal aid to raise the children that they "have to save". If anti-abortionists care so much about the fetus, when born, they should allow all those who cannot take care of those children to have unfettered social services.
65
@Raj They are also, for the most part, the very same people who condoned our horrific president's decision to separate families and put children in cages (and mistreat them) because they are "others." Yeah, sure. I believe they honestly care about children
12
@Raj. With all due respect, your first sentence sounds exactly like what someone 175 years ago would have said about abolitionists.
1
With all due respect. A woman’s body does not belong to the government.
8
As a Catholic, I am disappointed and angered to see the marchers co-opting Our Lady of Guadalupe for their partisan purposes. This rally is about raw political power. Attending is a vote for the president who in turn stands against the rights of immigrants, women, the poor, on and on. Yes, the Church is pro-life, but it is not pro-Trump. I wonder if they even know who Our Lady is.
81
Trump and Republicans continue as their mission to suppress, repress and depress the vote.
Meanwhile, they will pull all the stops in making sure their extremist base shows up on election day.
29
Until Trump claimed to be an anti-choice, Evangelical, Republican, he was a pro-choice, NY Democrat, who supported all the NY and national pro-choice Democrats for decades.
Masquerading as anti-choice is a publicity stunt to get votes and is just as fraudulent as the rest of his sham presidency.
Do the Evangelicals care about the poor Trump is taking food stamps away from? Do they care about millions that will be stranded without healthcare? Do they care about the planet which God relies on us to protect?
86
@Gus
Well a man who has a paid sexual relationship with a woman who is not his wife right after his wife has given birth.
He attends this rally today can anyone believe these people who have Trump at their meeting even pretend that this wedge issue is real?
Trump, Pence, Barr, Moscow Mitch .Perry are all pathetic liars in search of votes. They are all involved in a massive white men cover up. The Nazi's are on the march in Washington DC today and your a fool if you join them
White women who hate women in general love this wedge issue. Why dont these women who care so much about the unborn why dont they go after the men who contribute the sperm. Women cant make a baby on their own.
That would mean they cant be victims and they would have to think and care about the teachings of Jesus not selected passages.
The Holy Image is weeping for her people, tears of sadness.
5
"The tide is turning" - just another lie - no evidence and all the polls I can find actually say the exact opposite. These people can't even get one simple fact straight. How can someone claim to be a Christian and violate the 9th commandment? Easy, most are not really Christians, just folks with odd ideas about what a human being actually is.
24
?? Are you saying that we should not accept gay and trans people? We should hate them? Shun them? Shake our fingers at them?
1
Given his history as a philanderer going back to the 70's, it's hard not to suspect that his anti-abortion zeal was not always so fervent.
96
@Pat
Add this to the fact that Trump has almost certainly caused many abortions: they were probably performed for his own convenience.
9
It makes me sad that Trump has ruined what it means to march on our nation's capitol. He didn't attend this march because he cares about abortion - we all know that he has paid for many abortions, and not for his many wives. Donald cares only about himself. And it makes me sad that these folks have traveled so far to be told lies by a man that will never live up to the passion that led them to march on our nation's capitol. It makes me sad that this is just another beautiful tradition offered in our nation that Trump has forever destroyed, at least for the rest of our lifetime, viciously pitting citizen against citizen for his personal benefit. I'm thankful that I got to enjoy this vital civic privilege before Trump arrived, when it actually held meaning.
I will never have an abortion, so I will offer no comment on abortion. Of course, neither will Donald or the many white men that attend this march every year. I am, however, still a little confused by the idea that all life is sacred ... until they are born and they don't look like them, pray like them, or love like them, and suddenly their lives are no longer sacred. In fact, they are evil, and in some cases, God hates them. Can someone please explain to me how this works?
33
The only thing more hypocritical than the life-begins-at-conception-but-once-they’re-out-of-the-womb-they’re-fair-game movement is Agent Orange pretending he cares about it, them or, for that matter, anyone or thing but himself. Under Trump, the United States ranks 18th in the world as a healthy environment in which to raise a child, largely owing to infant mortality rates and environmental pollution and poor health care. If Trump and his evangelical phonies were truly pro-life, they would support strict corporate regulations, health-care as a right, gun control and climate change legislation, to name just a few. Besides, who, in their right mind would want to create, much less raise, a child in the bleak, hate- and anger-filled world Trump is fostering?
33
@Steve Griffith. By the way, check out who is actually running adoption agencies and homeless shelters and food banks for these grown-up, unaborted fetuses. They are not the secular or religious pro-abortion advocates. They are mostly the same folks walking at this March. And talk about hypocrisy—promiscuous men, including many pro-abortion advocates, are arguably greater beneficiaries of abortion for convenience than women because they get all of the benefits but pay none of the emotional cost.
3
@Steve Griffith
No one wants to That is why the birth rate in America is so low. American Women have choices, that they are exercising, their right not to engage in wedge issues and have decided to ensure that they dont have any children.
Who is their right mind want a child to suffer the insanity of America hoping that it is going to be better. It wont ,these generations of women who hate will be here long after Trump is gone and women abusers are gone.
1
Feels like any action which wins him the next election is open for Trump. All moves are based solely on winning, which leaves little doubt that the country, its citizens, its constitution or its history are safe.
This is what happens when your turn the office of the President as a prize for contenders who play survivor or Big brother.
The actual cause that we fight for is lost, only winning matters.
9
It bewilders me that one can be PRO-FETUS and so ANTI-LIFE in just about every other way: denying climate change, reversing regulations designed to protect our air, water, food, the environment and wildlife, retracting benefits to families in the area of health and general welfare, etc. On and on. The unwavering support of Trump for his anti-abortion stance in the context of his other highly destructive policies and actions is mind-boggling and frightening.
728
@Karen I am firmly pro-choice, but if abortion was made illegal, I would at least feel better if our environment was protected and family planning benefits were easy to access. Instead, safety nets are being taken away and the future of the environment looks bleak. It's just chaos and destruction all the way down.
28
@Karen
This is only about the base and enhancing his prospects for re-election. He does not care about anything that does not in some way serve him.
37
@Karen Demanding every fetus be brought term regardless of the millions in pre-existing medical needs and then supporting candidates who want to deny them health coverage due to pre-existing conditions
9
If only he cared about the people in the world who are already born.
875
@Mikeyz ....correct, he cares for one person & one person only: himself
34
@Mikeyz : and if he cared about life he’d care about climate change, clean water & soil, and not traumatizing children by putting them in cages.
43
@Mikeyz
It's not like he cares about embryos or fetuses, either. He cares about getting re-elected.
48
How is it that this corrupt man, elected by a minority, hypocritically professing to support issues believed by a minority that threaten the lives of a majority of women (illegal abortions) and children (poor gun controls), is being supported by ALL the GOP senators AND has a chance of winning the Electoral College in November? How???
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@Demetroula
Two reasons that I can surmise. The electoral college enablers rural and conservative voters to wield outsized influence. And, quite simply we now have a cult of delusion in power without regard to our laws.
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@Demetroula The Electoral College is primarily geographic, and only accidentally demographic. Hillary, and many big-city liberals, looked at nationwide trends at the expense of reckoning on provincial voters, whose voting power is weighted because of the College. It was a phenomenal blunder.
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@Middle of the road
I am happy to say you are wrong.
8
While the pro abortion supporters stress the need for safe clean facilities for the procedure , unfortunately one of the persons involved does not come thru it alive.
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Embryos are not persons.
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@mack: Except that there is only ONE person involved in safe, legal pregnancy termination: the PATIENT.
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@mack No one is pro-abortion. No one wants abortions to happen. They should be safe, legal and RARE, thats what everyone wants.
8
"In exchange for the appointment of anti-abortion judges, his unwavering support for Israel and his attempts to protect the rights of students to pray in schools, they have generally overlooked Mr. Trump’s own complicated past with the issue and his own history of three marriages and two divorces."
The hypocrisy is more than I can handle. It's so much more than his marriages and divorces. These single issue voters will look past every human rights violation known to man as long as a baby can be born into the world. Trump is playing them...expertly. He is no more anti-abortion than he is anti-porn star. Wake up, people!
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@MRose Perfectly said!
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@Middle of the road
Sorry, but the anti semitic attacks have come form the far right. You didn't see any "Bernie-bros" carrying signs that said "Jews will not replace us"!
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@Middle of the road
Suggest reading the excellent recent article in Mother Jones about Trump and Evangelical support. The issue of women's reproduction and Israel's role in the coming of the End Times are really part of the same story.
4
It's pretty simple. If you're against abortion don't have one and don't tell me what to do.
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@Craig
Why would you need fifty or let someone that could not pass a background check even buy one on line or at a gun show?
7
I am generally pro choice but this argument falls short. Imagine if we applied the same reasoning to murder or rape.
3
@Craig Background checks aren't telling you you can't have a gun. You aren't guaranteed the right to own an automatic weapon by the 2nd amendment. Strawman argument, thanks for playing.
18
Oh! oh! The president's coming to try to try to assure himself of our votes in November! We are soooo lucky!
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@nb
He doesn't have my vote.
2
Trump cares about this issue solely because of votes ... it is clear the GOP and evangelicals care only about humanoids from conception to birth and from incurable illness to death.
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@J L. S. You are exactly right. They want to take away access to birth control and a woman's right to choose - and then when those children is born abandon them. Then when a person, at the end of their life, wants to be allowed to die with dignity - nope....they want to control that too. I wish the evangelicals and Republicans would follow their own beliefs among themselves, and stop trying to tell the rest of us how we need to live.
7
This is all about trying to foist your religious views on others in a country in which “Separation of Church and State” is enshrined in the Constitution. And to top it all off, the great majority of Americans believe women should continue to be able to access safe abortions and have reproductive autonomy. More “tyranny of the minority“ just as for sensible gun control.
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@Susan, separation of church and state is laughable in the US. I was watching the impeachment trial and the whole thing started with a prayer. And bibles and stuff mostly say that life starts with the first breath. It's all so opportunistic and misogynistic what's happening.
27
Constitution, did you say? That is too long a word! Let me see if I can break it! What really breaks my heart is the fierce support he gets from zombie Republicans!!
"We are lost!!!"
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@Susan. You don't want religious beliefs foisted upon you..pro lifers don't want any of their taxes paying for abortions... your beliefs.
Women who needed abortions prior to Roe vs Wade got them. Unfortunately, not always in safe conditions. If R v W is overturned, women again will be subjected to terrible circumstances. What Pro-lifers won't acknowledge is that their movement is a direct attack on women's health. Do they support capital punishment, and no abortions? How does one reconcile that.
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@Judy in Portland R v W will not be overturned. Why? Well, in the election following that, the GOP would lose the House, Senate and the presidency. The Supreme Court would be packed and something stronger than R v W would be passed. They know better than that and R v W will survive. They will keep pushing the restrictions in conservative states though.
2
@Judy in Portland They're Fake Christians. Sure, they want all these babies to be born (regardless of risk to the mother, or babies with incurable illnesses that leave them in vegetative states), but don't have any plans to provide them with healthcare once they've been born.
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@Judy in Portland I'd go a step further. Wealthy women will have the means to get an abortion. All the other women will suffer.
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I’m pro-choice. And if I thought he was doing it because of a personal belief or conviction, I’d respect his stance. But I don’t think the man has an honest bone in his body. Hence it’s just a calculated political position.
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And the sad thing— most of his supporters know this also. And they don’t care.
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@Stephen I wish everyone could see this obvious truth. I doubt very much he cares in the least about the unborn. He definitely doesn't care about the living. I doubt very much he cares about the lives of the people in his base beyond their usefulness for stoking his ego and casting a vote for him. I actually believe he might ditch a member of his own family if one dared to criticize him publicly. (He'd probably say he barely knew them.) I do believe he cares quite a lot about one person: himself.
@Stephen It's the people with personal beliefs and convictions who are dangerous. They think they should be able to force girls and women to carry pregnancies they cannot carry, or do not want.
What is there to respect about people who think they can force their will onto my body?
3
How can anyone attending this rally believe that Trump cares about this issue? What evidence is there in his pre- political history that demonstrates any interest at all in the pro-life movement? Didn’t he used to be pro- choice? Another hollow attempt at impression management for the sake of political expediency.
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@Liz Lea He was pro-choice before he became president. It's all a political stunt...
10
That Trump will appear in person at this demonstration over what is one of the most divisive issues on our country underscores that he is not interested in leading the entire country. He is interested in serving his base, his loyal followers, his voters. He panders to this group, and they lap it up; forget about his sordid past, that doesn't matter as long as he promotes their cause. With Trump in office, everything is transactional: you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Anything for a vote, to stay in power.
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It's hard to see how we don't end up in a "Handmaid's Tale" scenario at this point.
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And in that story the women who initially supported the regime lived to regret their choice. The same will happen with these anti-abortion fanatics.
14
If Mr Trump, like Mr Hagemyer, thinks the end of Roe v Wade will mean the end of abortion he is as delusional as he is cruel.
Abortion will always be practiced: opposition to safe, legal abortion is subscribing to cruel and unusual punishment of women and will simply push them to the worst corners of desperation.
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I am an old woman and remember when abortion was illegal in this country. Women with money had safe options- among them was travel to other countries. Poor women and teens did not. Abortions were available illegally in the US - some by a few doctors who charged very high fees and some by people with little or no medical training. Some young tried rumored methods of self administered abortion. These choices did not always end well. Other young women had to drop out of school - giving up dreams of college and a good job.
Now there is a safe method of medical abortion using two pills which would still be available to anyone with sufficient resources no matter what laws were passed.
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@Judith Turpin
The key words are "sufficient resources." And don't forget "Knowledge."
1
@David Berman MD
People of means have always had access to abortion and always will.
Look, if you don't believe in abortion, or think it's some moral crime, then don't have one. Science and social science especially, is not on your side, and there is more to morality than life and death (such as quality of life, and crime rates). I don't judge you for your beliefs, I judge you for continuing to push that others believe what you do.
That being said, the president being at this demonstration is gross because he is pandering. He has been a democrat for most of his life. He has no opinion on this. He would just as likely walk in a pro choice march if his advisors told him it would get him more votes. He is the very picture we use for slimy politics, and yet...
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@Francis Research in both the natural and social sciences actually does present strong support for the idea of personhood for unborn human beings.
@Thomas "Personhood" is a philosophical issue. Science can no more tell us that a fetus is a person than if a hotdog is a sandwich.
18
Social sciences can push for personhood in unborn fetuses, but they also strongly point to the deviations that happen when someone is forced to parent, or abandons their child. and yes, even Adoption isn't perfect. Some have also correlated the implementation of Roe v Wade, with the drop in crime rates: ie, when those children who would have been forced to have been born, weren't. Morality is more than black and white, and far more complex than life over death. Christians knew that once.
3
Time for truth in advertising.
March for Forced Birth.
Call it as it is: Forced Birth. That's what they are advocating for. Forcing women to give birth. A march for life would include the maintenance of life, for all of us, after birth.
Health care. Clean water. Clean air. Uncontaminated land. Land to live on. None of this is part of the March for Life or the right wing agenda. In fact Trump is now "willing", that's mighty big of him isn't it?, to sacrifice your Social Security and Medicare so that he and his friends can save on taxes.
Just remember don't use their marketing terms like "pro-life". It is state mandated, religion twined with government, Forced Birth.
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@Marie it is not just women they would force to give birth, but children too, including those whose pregnancy is the result of abuse (including incest). The government regulation of what procedures women can and can’t have, with the threat of imprisonment if they violate them, is totally obnoxious in a allegedly modern democracy.
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@Middle of the road - "If you honestly believe what you have written "
What is not to believe?
The movement is to force women into pregnancy and childbirth - as well as a life time of having a child to raise in the world. They want to make it non-optional. A requirement. Forced.
Trump and the right have already, not just want to, already have cut regulations that protect the air and water and land we need to live healthy lives and survive. And they working to further cut the protections for our health. That's not debate, that stated policy.
And Trump literally said he is willing to cut social security and medicare - you know, things that some people's lives depend on.
Sorry if that bothers the Trumpers out there, but aren't they famous for telling it like it is? (Or is that only for truths they like?)
30
@AnneEdinburgh
Called being a Nazi and taking away our freedoms. We lost our freedom to a draft dodger, how ironic is that. America taken down by Russian loving GOP who have enriched themselves. their women get abortions but not anyone else.
Trump is with a prostitute after his wife gives birth to that Barron child. How rich and ironic is the whole episode.
Any person who truly believed in God and not slogans they would be incested by his appearance. Pence another liar in the face of God. . These politicians are to rich to be in touch with the plight of the average citizens and the stooges of white women promoting there slogans cant see beyond their own hate for women.
6
Trump is making a political decision for himself, supporting a cause that few (if any) voters who oppose him support. This action is not going to lose him votes, but looks to cement his support from the conservative religious right.
Who knows what he actually believes, but as a purely political move, it is a smart play.
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@Jason A. This appearance is ill-advised. The chips are on the table and the cards are revealed. DJT only governs for his base and nobody else. He won in 2016 because he was able to fool enough independents that he would not pander to the extreme elements of the Republican base whom independents and most other people do not agree with. As president, he has done just that - governed as a more extreme Republican than most or all other GOP presidents. This means that the election in 2020 is not looking good for him and this appearance will just cement the impression already out there that he has nothing to offer anybody outside of his base other than insults, lies and provocation. He is draining independents and the Democrats should use appearances like this to make sure that he keeps losing them.
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@Jason A.
Would only seem like a 'smart' move if you were stupid enough to believe in this guy in the first place. Its such a blatantly shameless and obvious move designed to shore up the pro-life vote that it hardly qualifies as 'smart'
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@The Hawk Don't forget he also won because of the help of Russians.
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MY BODY MY CHOICE. Women- stand up for your reproductive rights! VOTE!
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@MB There are actually two bodies involved, the mother’s and that of the unborn person that she is carrying. The concept of fetal personhood is the at the heart of the abortion debate. Stating my body my choice does fails to address it, and thus does not constitute an effective argument against the pro-life position.
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@MB you might take a moment to notice that the people marching in the photo are mostly women
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@Thomas
The fetus is not yet a person. Perhaps I could see some merit in the anti abortion argument if these misnamed right to life organizations also promoted support for affordable safe birth control, paid maternity leave, affordable and quality daycare day care, and a living wage.
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This man is a walking nightmare, supporting the notion that women should be incubators for the state.
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@someone
the old white men in the GOP party believe that also. When they are not running around with women twenty years their junior,
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@someone Thus we have "A Handmaid's Tale". Atwood saw it coming.
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Based on the policies of the GOP (cutting food stamps, welfare, and medicare benefits), it's obvious that "pro-life" is really another word for "pro-birth" since once an unwanted child is born, they are considered entitlement leeches looking for a handout.
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@Frink "Pro-birh"
Close, but they aren't simply pro birth, they want to be able to force you to have a baby against your will. That is Forced Birth, not Pro Birth.
The end game is Forced Birth.
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@Erik
How does having more babies reduce public assistance?
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@Erik
No, the right is give the wealthy and large corporations hand puts and forget everyone else. People like you really have no idea what you are talking about.
9
Oh, yes, Mr. Prayer, Peace, and Pro Life, Donald Trump.
His speech: “keep those votes coming, just don’t ask questions.”
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"...Mr. Trump’s relationship with the anti-abortion movement has been a transactional one since he entered politics in 2016.."
Indeed. But can't that be said about any and every relationship in Trump's life?
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When all you have is an inheritance, everything else looks like a limited-time clearance offer.
15
Really hope this is just the reflection of his final desperation. Such a demagogue.
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I can't think of a better avatar for evangelicals than the living embodiment of all of mankind's cruelty and ignorance, Donald Trump. With any luck at least a few in the crowd will see Donald Trump on the stage and realize that their "team" is as bankrupt morally as a Trump casino.
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@Thad
Three words...ain't gonna happen. These people are easily manipulated, having cult like devotion. They will never admit that trump is evil, their preachers tell them he has been sent by God. And they BELIEVE!!! They have a very loose tether to reality. They're also told they need to buy their way into heaven, cash only, no checks!
5
I fail to understand how a sitting president can take clear and almost manic stands on issues of gun control and abortion and profess to be governing this country as a whole.
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@marieka Since when did Trump profess to be governing the country as a whole? He only cares about the fans cheering at his rallies.
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Trump'll do anything for votes because he needs the protection of high office to stay out of jail.
He knows he can win in 2020 the same way he won in 2016:
Motivate his followers to vote;
Reduce enthusiasm for his opponents and/or politics in general to keep as many non-supporters from voting as possible.
The Greatest thing Americans can do is vote in November to Make Donald Indictable Again!
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@marieka He's a dishonest, totally corrupt person who panders to his base if it benefits him. He will easily swing in the opposite direction on any issue if he benefits.
14