Donald Trump has gotten himself into a whole lot of hurt as a result of the comments he expressed about abortion during a recent interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
Trump, the GOP front-runner, described himself again and again as "pro-life." When Matthews continually pressed him regarding punishing women who would break a ban on abortion, Trump said, “There has to be some form of punishment, yeah."
Later, when the reaction to his proposal to jail women drew, shall we say, an unfavorable response, he tried to deny what he had just said. Having obviously thought hard about an issue of keen interest to all Americans, he turned on his heel on the punishment issue and declaimed, "If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman … the woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”
Let’s ignore the fact that the political pundits seem inclined to let a candidate walk back within hours what he was just recorded saying about a key issue—a standard of tolerating lying accorded few others in American life. But as it happens, Trump, like a broken clock which happens to be right twice a day, was right on target about abortion as he engaged in a dialogue with himself. He is surely right that a woman who breaks a law involving killing ought to be punished, but that the dominant pro-life position demonizes abortion providers, not women, and that the pro-life stance is to try and have their cake and eat it too by portraying the woman making the decision as a "victim." Trump, in a dialogue worthy of any penned by Plato about Socrates has, unintentionally, pinpointed the utter moral incoherence of the dominant pro-life position.
Trump declared, upon two hours of deep reflection, that women who choose abortion are not really to be seen as responsible but are victims. Which leads one to ask—who are they victims of, exactly?
There is a vague suggestion in Trump’s meandering, finger-to-the-wind, flip-flopping comments that they are victims of the siren song of abortion providers. Trump is hardly alone in offering up abortion doctors, and one supposes Planned Parenthood, as those seducing women into abortion. But such a view is manifest sheer nonsense.
Those who make elective abortions available do not lure women into choosing abortion. There is no such advertising or messaging. At most Planned Parenthood tries to lure women into using birth control—a marketing strategy that contributes greatly to fewer elective abortions not more.
The reality of abortion is that women are frequently not victims. The instances in which "victimhood" actually exists include force, fraud, coercion, duplicity and mental incompetence. Even in those instances many pro-lifers, ignoring the victimhood they profess to care about, see no moral space that would justify an elective abortion.
Beyond these circumstances, when women find themselves pregnant they usually try to initiate a discussion with the man who they believe is responsible, if that man is willing to talk rather than ignore the situation. The conversation often fails to occur because men, unlike women, sometimes run from moral accountability when it comes to unwanted pregnancy. The conversation, when it happens, produces a belief on the part of the woman as to whether the man "wants" the baby. Further conversation then often ensues with friends and family and sometimes others. Then a decision, a morally accountable decision, is made.
When a woman decides upon an elective abortion outside those circumstances when she truly is a victim due to sexual coercion, she is making a voluntary choice. It is insulting and, more to the point, counterproductive for pro-lifers to claim otherwise. Why? Because pro-lifers need to win the argument in the mind of the woman who makes the decision that choosing abortion is wrong. Anything less is to put the moral blame on others when there are no others to blame.
Demonizing abortion providers has been a popular option for pro-lifers since they do not engage women about their actions but rather beat up on the small number of abortion providers. This ethical three-card Monte has led to closing clinics but ultimately will defeat the current pro-life position so ably articulated out of both sides of Donald Trump’s mouth.
Why is that? Because the clinics where surgical abortion is done are going to slowly fade away regardless of aggressive pro-life legislative efforts to do away with them. The future of elective abortion is pharmaceutical, not surgical. The Food and Drug Administration just relaxed the guidelines for taking the pill RU486 for elective abortions. Twenty-five percent of all abortions are already pharmaceutical. Certainly more drugs that permit even safer abortions are on the way. By targeting the clinics, pro-lifers are simply hastening the day when the majority of women will take a pill to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
Pro-lifers may think the same strategy of going after abortion providers will work against prescription writers. It won’t, not the least because it is an argument that, if consistently applied, holds the maker of guns responsible for gun mayhem, not the gun owner, and food companies solely responsible for making many of us fat—arguments most conservatives rightly do not accept. But, beyond conceptual incoherence, trying to demonize those who write prescriptions means demonizing plain old everyday doctors and nurses who are both popular and who won’t put up with it. Further, as telemedicine and internet prescribing grow, the demons will have to include operators of the Internet—good luck demonizing them as evil abortion providers.
Donald Trump clearly has no idea what he really believes about the ethics of abortion. He can only pander to what he thinks the pro-lifers in his party want to hear. But what pro-lifers believe is a jumble of inconsistent beliefs meant to keep them from carrying the political cost of their point of view. If abortion is killing, then condemning and even jailing women who often are making a choice, as Donald told us initially, makes sense. And while Donald now thinks otherwise, there is logically no shifting blame to providers who do not manipulate women’s choices. Moreover, in the future shifting blame in a world of pills not surgery will be both impossible to enforce and unpopular in the extreme.
Abortion is and ought remain a moral, not a legal, issue. And, as the Donald inadvertently taught us, when it comes to abortion, morality is very complicated.
Arthur L. Caplan is the Director of Medical Ethics at the
