Wondering on Wednesday (v52)

Oh boy, he sure put his foot in it today, didn't The Donald?

Nothing will antagonize people on the Left and the Right more than making the wrong statement about abortion. Well, maybe making the wrong statement about guns. Or the wrong statement about the Dream Act. Or, maybe, the wrong statement about veterans. Or Christians. Or marriage licenses. Or, well, any number of other hot button issues, which I guess is just about every issue our country faces today.

So what did His Hairness say today that almost got him schlonged? Oh wait, I meant nuked, sorry.

Well, in a conversation with Chris Matthews on MSNBC (recapped here on the NBC Nightly News), Trump stated that if abortion was banned and made illegal, there "would have to be some kind of punishment" if a woman got one anyway. Matthews, to his credit, did not have a heart attack, or even jump up and down doing a happy dance that he had finally asked the question that might take Trump down.

Instead, he pressed, and pressed, and pressed, trying to get Trump to commit. to a specific punishment. Ten cents? Ten years? Trump answered probably a dozen times that the punishment would have to be determined. And so it went, until the actual exchange was pushed off the air by the comments from everyone else.

Trump, like the rest of the Republican Presidential candidates, many sitting governors, and a boatload of others running for office in various jurisdictions, wants abortion to be banned, "with exceptions" but no one of any prominence has come out and said that the woman should be punished.

Now, everyone knows that I think the last way in the world to Make America Great Again is to vote for Trump - you can read all about that here. And most folks also know that the last place I want a Republican or Democrat politician, at the state or federal level, is anywhere near my lady parts - even if the politician has lady parts herself. You can read about that starting here.

I get the outrage from the Left on this one, but I have to wonder about all of the pearl-clutching from the Right, don't you?

Is 'punishing' someone who has an abortion too much for them, all of the sudden? I mean, we read about people who kill pregnant women being charged with two murders, the mother and the fetus, and that's not only OK, it's encouraged, it's sought after.  So if someone else kills a fetus, it's murder, but if the mother does it, what do we call it?

We call it murder, that's what we call it.

Abortion is murder, the protesters tell women at clinics. They tell patients that, sometimes aggressively, with the approval of the courts, because being able to shout "abortion is murder" and "rot in hell" and whatnot within a couple of feet of a woman going to a doctor's office is just speech, and that's protected and good, if you're screaming from the Right side.

So, if abortion is murder, and murder is a crime, and crimes deserve to be punished, why the queasiness about punishing a woman who would break the law to have an abortion?

And why is the woman who has an abortion a 'victim' if the abortion is illegal, but she's not a 'victim' when abortion is legal?

And if she's deserving of compassion because of the horrible situation she's in, a situation so bad that she seeks out a way to have the procedure done illegally, where is the compassion when she tries to do the same legally, I wonder? The situation itself is exactly the same, it's only treated differently.

And where is the compassion when the Right requires forced and unnecessary medical procedures, and ridiculous requirements on the temperature of a clinic, or on the width of the hallways such that two pieces of hospital equipment not even found in abortion clinics need to be able to fit side by side? Failure to comply with those rules can cause a clinic to lose its license.

And where is the compassion in making a woman, of any age, travel hundreds of miles, to go to a 'safe clinic', multiple times perhaps, before receiving a procedure? Or, to take that further, if the point of these ridiculous laws is to protect the safety of the woman seeking the care, why force her to go to a state that doesn't have the same protections, Texas?

And why gut funding for contraceptive health care which, as even most elementary kids know, is designed to prevent the need for abortions, Ohio and the rest of you?

If the Right wants to be tough on crime, and tough on legal abortion, then they should be standing up in support of Trump's comment, instead of running from it. They should be shouting it from the rooftops, rather than shouting at Trump for saying what he did. They should be castigating him for walking it back, as he did, instead of castigating him for saying it in the first place.

If not, their convictions are without courage, and conversely.