Here we go.
I’ve been waiting for this, and I’m surprised it’s taken this long during campaign 2016.
The speaker: Eric Metaxas, a writer and commentator whose support for the right to life and religious freedom is beyond reproach. (I commend to you his biography of William Wilberforce and his speeches at CPAC and University of the South on religious liberty.) Not a Trump fan, he has concluded that voting for Trump is imperative nonetheless.
The statement: “You’re going to have the blood of children on your hands” if you sit this one out or vote third party. He let that fly during an interview with Laura Ingraham that followed his article along the same lines in the October 13 Wall Street Journal.
I am not voting for Trump or Clinton. I spelled out my reasons in June, long before the latest tapes and Wikileaks releases involving the candidates. Nothing has happened to change my mind, not even a stern admonition from the estimable Mr. Metaxas.
I’ve been told before that the blood of the babies will be on my hands if I don’t back a certain candidate. First time I heard it, twenty-some-odd years ago, I was hurt. I was afraid that people were going to think less of me.
That was then. Today, while I like approval as much as anyone, I won’t go against my better judgment to get it.
Eric Metaxas is entirely sincere. So are the dedicated pro-life people who are choosing Trump as the alternative to Clinton. People like Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List have staked all their political credibility on Trump. I believe in their good intentions. Let them follow their consciences and best judgment. I’ll follow mine.
In practical terms, as I have written before, I believe the Supreme Court would be in no better hands with Trump than with Clinton. I find his assurances to pro-lifers unpersuasive.
Instead, I sadly think Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa of New Wave Feminists hit the nail on the head when she tweeted, “Supreme Court Justices are the new thirty pieces of silver.”
Ouch. But yes.
The day after the election, indeed the four years after the election, are going to be ugly for the right to life. Face it now. But far from sitting on my hands, as Mr. Metaxas fears, I’m urging people NOT to sit out the election.
Elect Senators and Members of Congress who will take seriously their powers of the purse and of confirmations. Send to Washington people who have something other than contempt for the right to life.
Elect state-level Executive Councilors who will blunt the impact of a governor who wants to send public money to abortion providers.
Elect state senators and representatives who will create a veto-proof majority for good legislation – an abortion statistics law, at a minimum.
There’s the pro-life political imperative this year.
As for the presidential race, something C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity in a different context seems apt. Screwtape might have seen this year coming.
I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.
Leaven for the Loaf 