Juno News - Dems succeed in making THIS a wedge issue for voters

00:00:00.000 And that is Congress must codify Roe v. Wade for all the states in America.

00:00:06.400 Stop playing politics of the woman's lives and freedom. 1.00

00:00:09.860 Let doctors do their job.

00:00:11.680 One hundred and ninety five Republicans voted that women would not have the right to counter them. 1.00

00:00:19.900 What world are they living in?

00:00:22.140 By now, it's beyond debate that attacking reproductive freedoms is a fundamental tenet of the GOP.

00:00:29.340 Exhibit A is a woman's freedom to choose and access to abortion care, a freedom that Donald Trump withdrew when he destroyed the right to choose in this country.

00:00:39.220 She will fight to lower costs for hardworking families, open the doors wide for good paying jobs. 0.94

00:00:47.360 And yes, she will restore abortion rights nationwide. 0.97

00:00:52.360 We'll stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.

00:01:08.840 Abortion is once again front and center in the U.S. election.

00:01:14.180 For months, Democrats have been trying to scare Americans, saying that if Donald Trump is elected president, they will no longer be able to murder their beautiful little babies.

00:01:23.580 Now, the Trump campaign is pivoting, with Trump himself promising to be great for, quote, women's reproductive rights.

00:01:29.720 The president's latest comments have hired some in the pro-life community, who say Trump still needs to earn their vote with pro-life policies, while others say he's the only option for the pro-life community.

00:01:41.720 We will dive into all of this today with author and pro-life activist Jonathan Van Maren.

00:01:46.900 I'm Rachel Parker, and you're watching Rachel in the Republic.

00:01:49.520 Hi, Jonathan. Thank you so much for being here today. We're happy to have you.

00:02:02.160 So I want to start off with just the basics.

00:02:04.540 Let's start off with the Democrats.

00:02:05.980 They have really been trying to make the abortion issue, the wedge issue, which is what they always seem to do, seems to happen here in Canada, when they really have nothing else to go on, when the economy is doing bad under their governance.

00:02:16.080 Do you think that the Democrats have been successful in making abortion the election issue this cycle?

00:02:23.080 Well, I think their greatest success actually has been in forcing the GOP to respond to them making abortion the main issue of the campaign, because American public opinion on abortion is very complicated.

00:02:35.060 It very much varies from state to state.

00:02:36.760 What we've seen with the last dozen abortion referendums is that most Americans are somewhat personally pro-life, but many of them are politically libertarian on the issue, which is why you're seeing the pro-life movement lose even by close margins in places like Ohio.

00:02:51.980 Obviously, Florida is the really big race coming up in November.

00:02:55.540 But the Democrats do not have a position shared by the majority of Americans.

00:02:59.840 And in fact, that the current ticket is the most radical ticket that the Democrats have ever put forward on abortion.

00:03:05.940 So Tim Walls actually signed legislation denying care to babies who have survived an abortion.

00:03:11.780 There was a brutal article in First Things by Dr. Charlie Camosi describing how Walls has essentially endorsed a form of infanticide.

00:03:19.500 And the same thing is true for Vice President Kamala Harris, who voted against the Born Alive Infants Survivors Act, which would once again mandate that medical professionals are responsible to care for a baby that survives an abortion.

00:03:32.240 And this does actually happen in Minnesota, where Tim Walls is from.

00:03:36.280 The record keeping indicated that babies were being born alive and left to die after abortions.

00:03:40.920 And then in response to news that this had happened to at least eight babies, he simply removed the reporting requirement to ensure that these stories simply wouldn't make the news.

00:03:49.500 And so where Trump was brilliant in 2016 is he was willing to actually describe particularly late term abortion in really gruesome terms that were visceral and appealed to people, helped them to see what was going on.

00:04:03.120 Whereas this time around, he seems to be responding to two of the most radical abortion candidates the Democrats have ever run by pivoting closer to their position instead of defining himself as fundamentally different.

00:04:15.520 Yeah, I think you raise a lot of valid points there.

00:04:17.920 I mean, just the other week I was out there interviewing some Americans in Niagara Falls, New York, and I was asking them what they thought about the abortion issue, of course, at the DNC the other week.

00:04:26.740 The Democrats were actually offering abortions for free there. 0.97

00:04:29.880 They had sponsored that Planned Parenthood vehicle.

00:04:32.080 I know over 20 babies were murdered.

00:04:34.060 It's a sick thing for a political party to be advertising and celebrating at their convention.

00:04:40.560 And many of the Americans I spoke to said, you know, I'm personally against abortion, but it's really someone else's decision to choose what they do with their body.

00:04:47.740 And again, we can see the left's language and propaganda being so successful when we talk about this little baby being someone else's body, which, of course, is not the woman's. 0.80

00:04:54.660 It's their own.

00:04:55.240 You know, this is all very, very obvious stuff, very clear stuff to anyone who actually takes the time to think about it.

00:05:01.400 Now, just before we get into further, you know, Trump's response and how this might have damaged his campaign a little bit, I just want to take one more minute to talk about the DNC.

00:05:08.620 They actually had a whole night talking and attacking Trump for his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who inevitably overturned Roe v. Wade.

00:05:16.200 And they actually had a bunch of speakers come up and say how they were denied emergency abortions and how this threatened their life.

00:05:21.360 I want to play this one clip of one woman talking about her experience.

00:05:24.680 We're going to unpack that.

00:05:25.680 We'll play this clip now.

00:05:27.020 Husband and I were expecting our second child.

00:05:30.200 Our daughter, Lauren, couldn't wait to be a big sister.

00:05:33.940 I was getting ready for her fourth birthday party when something didn't feel right.

00:05:39.060 Two emergency rooms sent me away.

00:05:42.240 Because of Louisiana's abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying.

00:05:46.560 I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life.

00:05:52.960 No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.

00:05:58.060 They write to me saying, what happened to you happened to me.

00:06:02.680 Sometimes they're miscarrying, scared to tell anyone, even their doctors.

00:06:07.940 So this woman, she says she's from Louisiana. 0.81

00:06:10.520 I find this clip just a little bit baffling for me.

00:06:12.600 It raised more questions and answers.

00:06:14.280 She said that she was miscarrying, but because of Louisiana's abortion laws, no doctors would confirm to her that she was, in fact, miscarrying.

00:06:22.640 And then she goes on to say that some women are afraid to tell their doctors that they're miscarrying because of abortion laws.

00:06:28.900 Can you unpack that for us?

00:06:30.100 Is this something that actually goes on in the states where doctors won't tell you that you're having a miscarriage because of abortion laws?

00:06:34.660 So this is an incredibly important point, and one of the reasons it's difficult to unpack is because, again, a lot of those details do seem suspect for a couple of reasons.

00:06:44.820 So first, the idea that abortion restrictions or pro-life protections, more accurately, somehow prevent women from getting the care that they need is not the case.

00:06:54.400 And there was a very long piece published in National Review by pro-life activist Alexandra DeSantis, where she went state by state and highlighted the fact that any woman is permitted to get any care that they need, miscarriage care.

00:07:07.740 Almost every single state actually permits abortion in the case of the woman's life or health being endangered.

00:07:13.940 So even abortion is permitted in those instances.

00:07:17.240 And so whether or not she was treated the way she was treated at these hospitals, that has nothing to do with pro-life laws protecting pre-born children in the womb.

00:07:26.620 But this is not only the most common, but the most brilliant tactic abortion activists use. 0.95

00:07:31.100 We've seen this play out in Argentina.

00:07:33.060 We saw this play out in Ireland.

00:07:35.200 We saw this play out in Malta, where abortion activists will actually sort of trawl emergency rooms admissions and look for somebody who is pregnant.

00:07:45.320 And hopefully there's a story that they can use to sway people against pro-life laws, to accuse pro-life laws of being cruel.

00:07:53.160 And so, of course, most famously in Ireland in 2018, the majority of Irish people voted to do away with the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, protecting life in the womb because of the case of Svita Halepanavar, who they claimed died as the result of being denied an abortion.

00:08:08.300 Even though every single forensic autopsy, every single medical report had established beyond doubt that that was not the case, it didn't really matter because, as Churchill said, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

00:08:22.800 And the Democrats are playing a very, very clever game here, which is asserting that pro-life laws are objectively cruel and that if pro-life laws are passed, women will die. 0.59

00:08:33.280 This is a very, very potent message.

00:08:35.300 And it's a message that I think the pro-life movement and the Republican Party have failed to respond to adequately, even though we have good answers to all of these questions.

00:08:44.060 So when we talk about the pro-life community and the Republicans failing to respond to this adequately, what we instead saw following the DNC was Trump seeming to pivot his stance on abortion.

00:08:53.780 J.D. Vance came out and said Trump would not support a national abortion ban if elected president, and he would actually veto such legislation if it landed on his desk.

00:09:01.280 Then Donald Trump took to his platform Truth Social and wrote online and said, quote, my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights. 0.64

00:09:09.980 And we see him using the language of the left there with the talk about women's reproductive rights and no discussion with the actual little baby.

00:09:16.880 So what's your take on this?

00:09:18.360 What is the response been from the pro-life community in the States since the Republicans came out with this stance on abortion, not allowing the national abortion ban?

00:09:27.080 No, another great question, because I think context here is important, is that Donald Trump was a pro-choice New York liberal for most of his life.

00:09:35.820 He changed his position prior to running for president, which was actually an indication of the power of the pro-life movement.

00:09:42.060 My joke always was that in Canada, if you're pro-life and you want to become prime minister, you have to pretend you're not pro-life.

00:09:47.140 In the United States, if you're a Republican and you want to become president, you have to pretend to be pro-life, even if you're not.

00:09:53.920 Whereas in Canada, you have to pretend the opposite, right?

00:09:56.080 Andrew Scheer was pro-life, but he spent the whole campaign running away from it.

00:09:59.440 And so the pivot that you're referring to is incredibly significant because it's the first time you have a Republican candidate claiming not to be pro-life and going to great lengths to establish his pro-choice credentials,

00:10:09.760 using language, as you pointed out, like pro-choice.

00:10:13.100 And so this is obviously a serious mistake for a couple of reasons, is that obviously what Trump is trying to do is appeal to pro-choice voters.

00:10:19.560 He's looking at the polls that came out of a lot of the referendums last fall.

00:10:24.040 There's, of course, more referendums coming up in November.

00:10:26.520 And he's concluding that he needs to pivot to the left in order to win those voters.

00:10:30.720 But the Democrats have the abortion vote locked up.

00:10:33.600 But he may not have the pro-life vote locked up if he's not very careful, because the pro-life response has been interesting.

00:10:40.860 There's three primary groups of pro-lifers and how they're responding to this.

00:10:45.140 There's people who are MAGA first.

00:10:47.160 And so there's a lot of people who would call themselves pro-life who are very, very angry at the pro-life leaders who are coming out and pushing back against this pivot.

00:10:54.820 So you have a lot of pro-lifers, probably the most prominent and consistent of which is Lila Rose of Live Action, who are coming out and saying Trump is endorsing pro-abortion policies.

00:11:04.420 He's running to the left on this issue.

00:11:06.640 And really, really sadly, he's pivoting the GOP into a pro-choice party, which would mean the only political vehicle that the pro-life movement has could be gone if he was reelected on a pro-choice platform,

00:11:18.180 which means the time to speak out and to push Trump into changing his mind and pivoting back is now, because there may not be another opportunity to do so.

00:11:27.260 And the third category of pro-life leader is there's been quite a number of pro-life leaders who are simply deciding to sit this out and say nothing.

00:11:34.760 Is they obviously want the Harris-Walls ticket to lose.

00:11:37.920 The Harris-Walls ticket would be a disaster.

00:11:40.300 At the same time, they know that they cannot sign off on the things the Trump-Vance ticket are saying.

00:11:45.980 The Republican platform was bad enough because the pro-life plank that had been put in in 1984 was pulled out.

00:11:54.180 I interviewed one of the delegates to the RNC for First Things magazine, and essentially the Trump campaign railroaded social conservatives.

00:12:01.340 They tried to keep most of them out of the deliberation process, and then they ramrodded the platform through without any days of deliberation.

00:12:09.240 Usually it's three days of deliberation.

00:12:10.700 Everybody was basically out on the sidewalk outside the RNC in Milwaukee after a single morning without any discussion permitted on the platform itself.

00:12:20.720 So pro-lifers were first cut out of the process, but pro-life leaders were convinced that there was enough language in there that they could use to say this is supportable.

00:12:29.440 But with every passing week, it appears the Trump-Vance ticket is clarifying their position and actually confirming the suspicions of a lot of people like myself that Trump is actually basically reverting back to the position he held prior to running for politics in the GOP.

00:12:44.860 I just want to dive into sort of the pro-life movement in the States for a minute.

00:12:48.800 You mentioned Lila Rose.

00:12:49.900 I know that since she's come out with her stance and saying that she's been very disappointed in Trump's policy, which, as you mentioned, I mean, there's actually no pro-life party in the States.

00:12:57.900 There's no party that's promoting pro-life policy.

00:13:00.740 She's been sort of viciously attacked online with many people saying, you know, your organization live action stands to benefit, stands to make more money with a Kamala Harris government.

00:13:09.580 And I think in that sense, it seems like perhaps the Democrats' decision to make abortion the election issue, to make it the wedge issue, has in some regards have been successful just in the fractures that we're seeing within the Republican Party.

00:13:22.600 What's your take on that?

00:13:24.180 No, I think you're precisely right.

00:13:26.080 It's absurd to accuse somebody like Lila Rose, who has been working to fight abortion since she was a teenager.

00:13:32.640 She wrote a great book on that, actually, but she went undercover in abortion clinics. 1.00

00:13:36.560 I don't have to agree with every aspect of live action strategies to recognize a gross smear when I see one and to accuse Lila Rose of somehow endorsing an abortion regime because her organization's stance to benefit, I think, is nothing short of slander and defamation. 0.99

00:13:51.020 It also kind of reveals this streak of cruelty in the MAGA movement that I don't think that we can ignore.

00:13:56.060 The personal attacks being leveled at her by Trump activists have been incredibly vicious.

00:14:00.760 James Lindsay, sort of the famous pseudo-academic who calls himself an anti-communist, actually accused the pro-life movement of being a communist front merely for calling on the Trump Vance ticket to return to the policies that Trump championed in 2016.

00:14:15.620 And I'm not quite sure what these activists expect pro-lifers to do.

00:14:19.400 We work on one issue, and that is the protection of pre-born life in the womb.

00:14:23.100 We genuinely believe that there is no issue more important than that if we are, in fact, killing thousands of babies in the womb every day.

00:14:30.100 This is not an issue we can merely agree to disagree on.

00:14:33.240 Nobody's saying do not vote for Trump.

00:14:35.260 What they're saying is that if Trump needs pro-life votes, pro-lifers need to hold him accountable and to stop this slide to the left because only we can stop that slide to the left because it appears that the Democrats are pulling him in that direction.

00:14:48.360 So you're kind of seeing a lot of different conservative activists, and you're seeing what they value the most.

00:14:54.700 Is it political victory and at what cost?

00:14:56.940 Because we're seeing them welcome RFK Jr., who's pro-choice throughout all nine months, supports no abortion restrictions whatsoever, welcoming in Tulsi Gabbard, who again is pro-choice.

00:15:07.780 And my concern is we're seeing the development of a uniparty.

00:15:10.600 And, you know, as a fellow Canadian, you know this, we know what it looks like when both of the major parties support abortion unequivocally.

00:15:18.780 What it means is that the pro-life movement does not have a voice in politics, that we struggle to ensure that the rights of the pre-born are respected, and MPs that do speak out are often disciplined by the leader.

00:15:30.280 And so I think those of us who look at what's happening in Canada, in the UK, in France, and see what it looks like when abortion is permanently off the platform, but pro-lifers are still invited to be in the tent.

00:15:40.880 We know what that looks like, and I think it's a five alarm fire for pro-lifers in the U.S. looking at the pivot in GOP politics.

00:15:47.540 So for pro-lifers who are choosing to speak out, speak up, as you mentioned, and many of them being lambasted, you're saying this is sort of a responsibility they have because we've seen the results here in Canada.

00:15:57.840 What does this actually look like, you know, pragmatically in November?

00:16:01.460 Does it look like pro-lifers still going to the polls and voting for Trump because he's a better option?

00:16:05.600 Does it look like them just abstaining from voting?

00:16:07.880 What do you think their result, their actual decision will be come November?

00:16:11.600 It's an interesting question because this is an issue being litigated in public, and there's some pro-life activists who are emphasizing that we need to call the Trump Vance ticket out.

00:16:23.160 We need to be constantly pushing them back towards their previous positions.

00:16:26.340 And at the same time, we have to vote for them because the Harris-Walls administration will be a disaster.

00:16:31.660 I think that's incredibly fair and incredibly pragmatic.

00:16:34.920 Allie Beth Stuckey is one of those, I think, pushing this the hardest, and she's done a very articulate job of that.

00:16:40.700 I remember in the 2016 election, which I covered extensively, I went to Trump rallies and things like that.

00:16:46.580 I was not at all convinced that Trump would do anything pro-life.

00:16:49.720 I had friends who had, you know, protested Planned Parenthood fundraisers at Trump Tower.

00:16:54.540 The likelihood that he's paid for an abortion is extraordinarily high because he always refuses to answer that question.

00:16:59.860 And so I thought, well, what's the guy going to do?

00:17:01.780 And my conclusion is I know what Hillary Clinton is going to do, and I don't know what Trump is going to do.

00:17:06.820 And so the most pragmatic choice in this case would be Trump because he's not passionate about abortion, but Clinton very much is.

00:17:13.400 And I think the same rubric kind of applies.

00:17:16.360 The secondary consideration, which is being discussed by guys like Dr. Ed Fezzer, Jonah Goldberg also cited the same thing,

00:17:23.560 is there are some pro-lifers making the calculation that the only way we stop this GOP slide to pro-choice is actually to vote against him,

00:17:31.600 to prove that they have to come back and fight for pro-life votes, because if the Republican ticket wins while throwing pro-lifers under the bus,

00:17:39.320 they've kind of given up their seat at the table, and that seat won't be waiting for them after the election.

00:17:44.040 I'm not sure what is the smartest.

00:17:46.540 My instinct, of course, is that the Trump-Vance ticket is voting for them is to vote against the Harris-Walls ticket.

00:17:53.800 And voting against the Harris-Walls ticket, I think, is very, very important.

00:17:56.660 But the strategic reality that forcing a GOP loss for the purpose of ensuring that the GOP recognizes its need to include pro-life principles in its platform going forward is very compelling.

00:18:11.100 And I think that those who are choosing it are essentially rejecting the rhetoric that this is the most important election in our lifetime once again.

00:18:18.740 So it really depends on your political calculation.

00:18:20.860 And there are people who frankly don't think the Republicans survive a Harris-Walls administration.

00:18:25.080 My greatest concern with the Harris-Walls administration is if they pack the Supreme Court, if they essentially decide to change all of the norms, change all of the rules of the game,

00:18:34.660 so that even if the GOP regains office four years from now, the deck is so stacked that, say, President Ron DeSantis couldn't actually make the pro-life gains that we need him to.

00:18:45.740 You know, I have to ask, just because people are always drawing parallels between Canadian and American politics,

00:18:50.940 many people saying, oh, if Justin Trudeau was swapped out shortly ahead of the next Canadian election, the Liberals would see a resurgence.

00:18:57.900 He is just the reason that that party is so unpopular right now.

00:19:00.180 With the Democrats seemingly being, you know, successful, at least at making this a divisive issue within the Republican Party,

00:19:05.580 can we expect to see, I think we've seen a little bit of this rhetoric already, but can we expect to see the Liberals here in Canada really amp up this rhetoric and making abortion a wedge issue for the Conservative Party here in Canada?

00:19:15.460 Or do you think it's just something they don't have any basis in, given that the Conservative Party has moved so far from caring about the issue of abortion

00:19:22.820 and being so unwilling to legislate on it really in any capacity?

00:19:26.340 As long as there are pro-life MPs in the Conservative Caucus who are speaking up on the issue, the Liberals are going to use it as a wedge issue.

00:19:33.960 And that's why Pierre Polyev has wanted members of Parliament like Arnold Veerson, who's the head of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus,

00:19:40.360 and Kathy Wagenthal, who has consistently put forward pro-life legislation, it's why he wants them to shut up.

00:19:46.160 Because every time they speak out, the Liberals turn it into an attack ad.

00:19:49.240 They know that Pierre is pro-choice.

00:19:50.920 They also know that they can split the Conservative base over this issue.

00:19:54.640 And that's what I think that people need to recognize about the Liberal tactic,

00:19:57.780 is the Liberals aren't actually trying to increase their own votes by coming out and talking about the abortion issue again.

00:20:04.060 They're actually just trying to depress social Conservatives so much that a whole bunch of us stay home.

00:20:08.800 Because they know that every time Pierre comes out and announces once again that he supports abortion.

00:20:13.900 In Canada, if you support no abortion legislation, that means you de facto endorse a regime that permits abortion up until nine months.

00:20:21.040 A recent study came out of Quebec from the University of Montreal,

00:20:25.080 emphasizing that we've actually seen the rate of babies born alive and left to die after abortions rising.

00:20:30.480 It got almost no mainstream media coverage.

00:20:32.640 But again, this is a study coming...

00:20:34.000 I'm surprised the study was even done.

00:20:35.520 And you're getting crickets from the federal leadership on this.

00:20:38.960 And so Trudeau will bring it up in the hopes that folks like ourselves and maybe a lot of your listeners

00:20:43.700 are going to get so sick and tired of hearing Pierre defend the indefensible

00:20:47.900 that we're going to decide to vote third party and stay home.

00:20:50.780 So I think that Trudeau and the Liberals are going to lean hard into this

00:20:53.920 as a way of splitting the Conservative base rather than maximizing enthusiasm in their own.

00:20:59.960 Jonathan, thank you so much for your insight today.

00:21:02.040 Thank you so much for having me.

00:21:03.000 All right, everyone, that's all we have time for today.

00:21:05.940 We'll be back next week, Wednesday, with more coverage on the hottest issues in the American election campaign.

00:21:12.000 We will see you guys all then.

00:21:13.200 Have a great week and God bless.

00:21:14.800 See you guys.

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Juno News - August 28, 2024

Dems succeed in making THIS a wedge issue for voters

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