Elections 2020: Three Consistent-Life Approaches
by Rachel MacNair
The Consistent Life Network takes no stand on specific candidates. This is my own personal take on how people who support the consistent life ethic view the U.S. presidential election of November 3, 2020.
Three Categories
Category 1: Trump is Out of the Question; Biden is Bearable
People in this category are so aghast at Trump that they regard his being in office as intolerable, for a long list of reasons. For example: he doesn’t understand any taboo against using nuclear weapons; he’s sabotaging the diplomacy in the State Department that might prevent war; he eagerly supports the death penalty and suggests it in cases where accusations of guilt are sloppy; his words and policies often have negative effects on minorities and refugees; his budget has drastic cuts in the social safety net for the poor; he’s sabotaging efforts to mitigate climate change; and most recently, his response to a pandemic has cost lives and increased poverty far more than would have happened under someone more competent.
His anti-abortion stand is one of the few good things about him, but even there, he doesn’t understand the issue well. He’s doing the opposite of life-affirming things – such as having decent health care available to the poor and avoiding cruelty to immigrants – that would help pregnant women choose life. He gives the pro-life cause a terrible public image, which is crucial to winning hearts and minds. He wouldn’t answer when asked if he’d ever paid for an abortion himself.
In addition, there are conservative columnists (not consistent-lifers) who admirably articulate what’s wrong with abortion but who also regard Trump as unfit and dangerous, such as David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and George Will.
Category 2: Trump is Crucial; Biden is Impossible
The people in this category reason this way: First, if the most vulnerable of us don’t have the right to life, then nobody does. It’s foundational to everything. You can’t have good medical care if you’re not even allowed to live.
The huge numbers of abortions make it by far the most horrific bloodshed going on in the U.S. This in turn impacts abortion policy in other countries. Those numbers will be shockingly higher under any current Democrat’s abortion policies. Therefore, a vote for Biden is a vote for thousands more babies being killed right away, and bodes ill for the future.
Additionally, Trump has this difference from his predecessors: the pro-life movement has for decades dealt with Republicans who don’t really mean it. Reagan had right-to-lifers working hard for his election, and yet appointed two pro-Roe Supreme Court Justices, thus keeping Roe v. Wade in place all these decades. (I’ve worded this as a betrayal; most pro-lifers won’t use that term, but heaven knows they were frustrated). George W. Bush considered the Title X regulation that would keep family-planning money from going to abortion facilities, but he didn’t put it in place in 2006 because he didn’t want to risk alienating Congressional allies when he needed them for support of his war in Iraq. This delayed the regulation another 13 years.
Trump is the only one of the set who’s actually gotten the job done on Title X and several other abortion-focused policies. He’s the only president who addressed the March for Life in person.
Most important of all, he’s been more faithful in appointing Supreme Court judges who may be inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade, and would likely appoint more in a second term with probable upcoming vacancies.
Besides, do we really think that Biden will be better on keeping us out of war, given his past experience? It was the Obama-Biden administration that pushed a costly program of “modernizing” nuclear weapons.
Category 3: Not Willing to Choose Between Disasters
Those in this category won’t select either Trump or Biden. They may vote third party or independent. As my mother put it (my family has a long third-party tradition), she votes not for a selection, but for a direction. By voting for what she actually wants rather than what she merely finds not quite as objectionable, she communicates what she actually wants.
But there’s one obvious and glaring disadvantage to this approach: absent something weird and unpredictable, it’s only one of the candidates in the two major parties who will win. People in both the above two categories insist voting for anyone else is not really making a choice at all. You can feel cleaner, but you’ve helped the more objectionable candidate win by not voting for his or her opponent.
Putting the Blame in the Right Places
I fall in the third category, and with great trepidation I face an election year in which the many friends I have in both of the other categories are going to castigate me for not being in theirs. But in addition to the point that Category 3 is where my sympathies lie, I also know I would completely and entirely lose any shred of credibility with all my friends in either one of the first two categories if I selected the other one.
But here’s the point I most want to make:
While the logic of elections will have the people in each of the first two categories rebuking the people in the other, I don’t think this is where the rebuke best goes.
For people in Category 1, their actual opponents aren’t the people who use the reasoning of Category 2. Those in Category 2 are tender-hearted people with crucial concerns. The real problem is that Democrats are so extreme on abortion. They don’t merely have horrendous policy stands, but they constantly have words of contempt for people who think otherwise. Not mere disagreements, but disdain. They’re very deliberately chasing possible voters away.
I watched in a 2016 Clinton-Trump debate as Clinton justified late-term abortions using astonishing euphemisms. I watched in amazement that she didn’t understand that everyone that agreed with her was someone whose vote she already had, and the only thing she could possibly accomplish with that answer was to lose votes. Not people who would vote for Trump, necessarily, but people who she was discouraging from showing up to vote at all. Her answer was stomach-churning.
And for people in Category 2, their actual opponents aren’t the people who use the reasoning of Category 1. Those in Category 1 are tender-hearted people with crucial concerns. The problem is that while some Republicans are sincere, many candidates (including Trump) only give lip service on abortion because they know that’s where the votes are. In Trump’s case, he doesn’t have a hands-on approach to policy. He lets sincere people who do care handle the policy.
But he’s doing far more to keep pro-abortion resistance going than a president who was actually sincere and understood the issue would. The work of reaching hearts and minds has been made so very much harder because people who are rebelling against the cruelty he’s practiced put pro-life advocacy into that same category. We’re going to have a lot of trouble correcting the stereotypes he’s doing so much to bolster. Mere policy can only do so much, and we need to understand how much of an obstacle he’s setting up for us in years to come.
More Positively
For the future, we can have less of an election dilemma by having ranked-choice voting.
For this year, those of us in the U.S., or who have friends in the U.S., can at least work directly on anti-violence referendums this November.
But we also need to remember that elections aren’t what decide everything. While they have strong impacts, lots of other actions have strong impacts as well.
I’ve noticed over the decades that when the Democrats are in office, the pro-life movement seems much more visibly active; during Republican administrations, the peace movement has more and larger demonstrations. Too many people have a sense that when their preferred candidate gets elected, they can sit back and let that person take care of the policy.
It doesn’t work that way. It’s absolutely crucial that, whoever wins, we keep active at the grassroots. We’ll never achieve what we need to achieve if we just leave it to politicians.
Henry David Thoreau
Slavery in Massachusetts, 1854
“The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls,—the worst [person] is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot- box once a year, but on what kind of a [person] you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”
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Stickers with the graphic on top are available from the Consistent Life Network’s shop.
Stickers and t-shirts with the second graphic are available from Rehumanize International’s shop.
For our posts on similar themes, see:
Pro-life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer / John Whitehead
My Difficulty in Voting: Identifying the Problem (about the American Solidarity Party) / Monica Sohler
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting / Rachel MacNair
See also our website on Peace & Life Referendums
This is very well stated and reflects a remarkable understanding of the reasoning behind these different approaches.
I find myself landing rather unhappily in Category 1, but with strong sympathies for Category 3. I’m very fortunate to be living in a state that’s using ranked choice voting, which allows me to express both. It’s almost certain that my relatively bearable, distant-third-at-best vote is the one that will ultimately be counted, but not before expressing my preference for other alternatives.
I do have a harder time seeing how Category 2 isn’t really single-issue when you get right down to it, although I agree that the Democratic Party’s intolerance of any dissent on abortion deserves much of the blame for playing right into the problem, and into Trump’s hands. Even considering only his effect on the pro-life movement, he has done and will continue to do much, much more harm than good for it. I fear that a Roe overturn during his administration, along perceived ideological lines and all the more if also along gender lines, could be the ultimate Trojan horse for the pro-life movement: it would lull many pro-life activists into a false complacency, galvanize pro-choice activism, and virtually destroy the PLM’s moral credibility in the court of public opinion by allowing an egomaniacal misogynist who openly disdains the vulnerable to become its public face, all while legal abortions would largely continue. Then again, all of this, including Trump himself, is part of the price of Roe in the first place. The ruling has rationalized so much state-sanctioned and socially-approved violence, both directly in the form of abortion and, on the other side, of tolerance of numerous other reprehensible things. I want to see it gone, but not in a way that will horrendously backfire.
Having said all that, I will never not respect a conscientious third-party vote. There is very rarely if ever a morally clean vote in terms of nonviolence, which is why I couldn’t agree more with the conclusion of this: “We’ll never achieve what we need to achieve if we just leave it to politicians.” We need to do so much more than vote.
So, while rejecting Trump, you find the solution is to vote for Joe Biden, who supports abortion until birth, who is a closet racist, who claims that “if you vote for Trump you aren`t back”, who wants to put the right to abortion in the Constitution, and will support the United Nations and other liberal institutions pro-abortion attempt ideological colonization of Africa. It makes all the sense. Its difficult to picture a more inconsistent approach to the abortion question, because it means the surrender to the pro-abortion fundamentalist position supported by Joe Biden. If he doesn`t want to have the pro-life votes, pro-lifers should do his will.
I am squarely in Category 3, and have been since I first voted in 1968. I have only twice voted for major party Presidential candidates, and the one time the candidate won I came to really regret my vote. I realize I live in a state where this category is really easy, as it is overwhelmingly Democratic, one of the bluest states in the country. But even if I didn’t, I still think this is what I would do. I don’t believe in voting for candidates with whom I disagree more than I agree, which is almost always the case with the major party candidates.
I do believe there are different priorities for different offices, based on what they do. In the Presidential race, I give high priority to issues of war and peace, because the President has extensive unilateral powers there while requiring Congressional approval for most other major actions. So I’ve been fairly comfortable voting Green for that office, although Greens are bad on abortion, because they are strongly anti-war and I agree with them on most everything besides abortion (and they tend not to mention abortion much – it’s a low priority for the Party).
Even in Category 3, some of the questions still exist in choosing among those candidates as rarely will you feel you agree 100% with a candidate. One of the questions is whether to try to stick to someone on the ballot where feasible, or to be more inclined to write-in someone with whom you are more aligned than any ballot choice. And often only the 2 establishment parties are on the ballot for an office, so you have to write in to vote for an alternative. (And the policies on allowing write-in votes, and whether they are counted, vary from state to state.)
So then you can look at the specific likely alternatives for this year’s Presidential race. For many CLE folks, the most compatible candidate will be Brian Carroll of the American Solidarity Party (a CLN member group), but he is not likely to be on the ballot in very many states (although probably a registered write-in candidate in many). So if he’s not on the ballot in your state, you might also look at alternatives who are. In most states, there will probably be at least one alternative, although alternatives will probably be fewer this election year because the pandemic has made petitioning to get on the ballot much more difficult.
The Libertarian Party is normally the alternative on the most ballots, often all states. Their candidate has not been selected, but it appears there is growing momentum towards selecting Rep. Justin Amash. In most states, if he is selected, he is likely to be the Presidential candidate actually on the ballot who is closest to a CLE perspective. Abortion has been a difficult issue for the Party, and in recent elections the pro-choice contingent in the Party has held sway. But Amash is strongly pro-life, so that could change this year.
Amash is strongly against military interventionism and for reducing the military budget. He is also a principal co-sponsor of legislation to abolish the federal death penalty. In addition, he has an excellent strong position on criminal justice, which clearly affects our poverty and racism issues. Also, in most states he will probably be the only Presidential candidate on the ballot who is from an ethnic minority (Arab-American, a group which elicits strong venom from many white Americans). CLE folks have varying views on the role of government, and those who believe we need strong governmental action related to poverty and racism will have reservations about his libertarian skepticism of government social programs.
I have reservations about libertarianism in general, but Amash is sounding increasingly like someone I could vote for.
I hope you will wake up and not commit the mistake of voting for a worthless human being like Biden. “Abortion activists were livid yesterday that the Supreme Court protected the Little Sisters of the Poor from having to fund abortions. But presidential candidate Joe Biden has some words of reassurance for them. he promises, if elected, that he will force the Catholic nuns to fund abortions./ As LifeNews reported, the Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding a pro-life order from President Donald Trump that protected the Little Sisters of the Poor from being force to pay for abortion-causing drugs under their health insurance plan. Abortion advocates have spent years trying to force the Catholic nuns to fund the destruction of unborn babies in abortions./ In comments after the ruling, Biden said he was not happy with the decision and said if elected he would overturn President Trump’s rule protecting the Catholic nuns and Christians Americans who don’t want their tax dollars to pay for killing babies./ Biden said, “As disappointing as the Supreme Court’s ruling is, there is a clear path to fixing it: electing a new President who will end Donald Trump’s ceaseless attempts to gut every aspect of the Affordable Care Act. If I am elected, I will restore the Obama-Biden policy that existed before the Hobby Lobby ruling.”
That policy is the Obama abortion mandate that Christian churches, businesses, colleges and religious orders had to take to court because it would compel them to pay potentially millions of dollars in fines for refusing to obey its mandate to fund abortion pills in their health insurance plans.” https://www.lifenews.com/2020/07/09/joe-biden-promises-to-force-little-sisters-of-the-poor-to-fund-abortions/?fbclid=IwAR388Znc357SrVOKUcctN3xtKBQa7E3AEVxGZCkv91P_2DeK0q3pBId9SuA
Justin Amash lost the nomination in the Libertarian Party. Jo Jorgensen will be their presidential candidate.
I’m in Category 3, but some of the most significant statements in the posting include that Trump “gives the pro-life cause a terrible public image,” and that “reaching hearts and minds has been made so very much harder, because people who are rebelling against the cruelty [Trump] had practiced put pro-life advocacy into the same category. ” I wish some local pro-life groups would pay attention to that and stop automatically call Trump and some other Republicans good guys.
I`m not a Trump supporter, but I can`t forget that Obama expelled 2 500 000 millions of illegal emmigrants and he started the children separation policy in the border and he never was attacked for doing that by the press. If a person does the same things that Trump did with a political style, he can get away with it.