The Trump phenomena you did NOT see coming…

by The Right Scoop

There’s something happening on the left that I doubt many saw coming. In fact I’d be surprised if anyone did.

Liberal Columnist David Brooks at the New York Times wrote a column yesterday entitled “The Abortion Memo”. In the column he posits the argument that the left’s extreme stance on abortion may in fact be hurting them electorally, which means their other priorities will be sacrificed over this one issue.

And what pray tell brought Brooks to this point that he’d write an article of such heresy to the left? Trump:

The G.O.P. became an alliance between its traditional pro-business wing and its burgeoning pro-life wing. Millions of Americans became single-issue voters. They consider the killing of the unborn the great moral issue of our time. Without pro-life voters, Ronald Reagan never would have been elected. Without single-issue voters who wanted pro-life judges, there would never have been a President Donald Trump.

I understand that our donors (though not necessarily our voters) want to preserve a woman’s right to choose through all nine months of her pregnancy. But do we want late-term abortion so much that we are willing to tolerate President Trump? Do we want it so much that we give up our chance at congressional majorities? Do we want it so much that we see our agendas on poverty, immigration, income equality and racial justice thwarted and defeated?

He began the article by noting that last week Senate Democrats defeated a bill that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks:

Last week I watched as our senators voted down the Republican bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks. Our people hung together. Only three Democrats voted with the other side. Yet as I was watching I kept wondering: How much is our position on late-term abortions hurting us? How many progressive priorities are we giving up just so we can have our way on this one?

He then argues that before Roe v. Wade Democrats used to be far more pro-life than they are now, citing presidents and liberal groups that would herald the cause of life.

What really struck me though was that he began making pro-life arguments!

We need to acknowledge our vulnerability here. Democrats support the right to choose throughout the 40 weeks of pregnancy. But babies are now viable outside the womb at 22 weeks. As Emma Green wrote in The Atlantic, scientific advances “fundamentally shift the moral intuition around abortion.” Parents can see their babies’ faces earlier and earlier.

We’re learning how cognitively active fetuses are. A researcher from Britain recently found that fetuses prefer to look at face-like images while in the womb. Early in the pregnancy they can recognize and distinguish between tastes. Late in the term they can recognize words, tunes, languages. They seem to begin crying, for example, by the 28th week. It could be that one of the current behaviors that future generations will regard as most barbaric is our treatment of fetuses.

Wow. Just wow.

He ends the article by explaining how there’s a shift in our culture among millenials on abortion and makes one last plea:

We also shouldn’t take millennial voters for granted. Boomers saw the pro-choice movement as integral to their feminism. Millennials do not. In 1991, 36 percent of young voters thought abortion should be legal in all circumstances; now only 24 percent do. Young voters don’t like the Republican total ban. But they don’t like our position, either. Moreover, young pro-choice voters are much more ambivalent or apathetic than young pro-life ones.

I’m asking us to rethink our priorities. What does America need most right now? One of our talking points is that late-term abortions are extremely rare. If they are extremely rare, why are we giving them priority over all of our other issues combined?

Is Trump so bad that even some liberals are now starting to rethink their extreme position on abortion? And this is only after one year of Trump. Just imagine what might happen on the left if Trump wins reelection in 2020 and they stay in the minority in both houses of Congress? We might see an epic sea change!

While that would be fantastic, at this point I don’t think even a moderate sea change is on the horizon, judging by the responses Brooks got on social media:




https://twitter.com/charlieburns/status/959506156367511552
https://twitter.com/heidiheilig/status/959505682792894464





https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/959251630309945345

And that’s just a smattering of liberals with verified accounts, some of which are also journalists and one Senator.

There may be some on the left who are open to the argument Brooks is making, but I doubt there will be enough to put the wind in Brook’s sail anytime soon. But we can hope this is perhaps the beginning of something positive on the left that could one day end up with more unborn lives beings saved.


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