Biden or Trump: Tyranny wins and liberty loses either way – Part II
As the 2024 election draws near, two things remain clear: 1) There are no discernable policy differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and 2) Tyranny wins and liberty loses regardless of who is elected.
In Part I of this series, we looked at how Biden and Trump embraced various forms of COVID tyranny. In Part II, we will take a look at their mutually shared views concerning the tyranny of abortion.
Like many politicians, Joe Biden’s position on abortion has changed over the years. Early in his career, Bidan said that he believed in the right to abortion, but that federal funds should not be used to pay for them. At one time, Biden supported the Republican Party’s efforts to ban “partial-birth abortions,” and expressed a desire to go further in restricting them.
In 2006, two years before becoming Obama’s vice president, Biden said in an interview that he “didn’t view abortion as a choice and a right.” A year later, he spelled out this internal conflict in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot,” he said. “I’m a practicing Catholic, and it is the biggest dilemma for me in terms of comporting my religious and cultural views with my political responsibility.”
Biden’s public position concerning the murder of unborn babies has moved significantly over time, a shift of political convenience that mirrors that of the Democrat Party. For example, during his 2020 campaign, Biden reversed his long-held support for the Hyde Amendment — legislation that prevented federal funds from being used for abortions — after his advisors convinced him that holding such a position would harm him politically. “I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the access to care they need, and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” he said in 2019.
After defeating Donald Trump, Biden took steps toward keeping his promise to restore government funding for abortion and moving the country in the direction of abortion without limits when he omitted funding for the Hyde Amendment in his first budget proposal.
As president, Biden has taken steps to reverse other restrictive abortion rules, including the “Mexico City Policy” banning US funding of international organizations that perform abortions. In November 2021, Biden announced that he would send millions of taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Population Fund, a pro-abortion agency that works in over 150 countries around the globe.
When the Supreme Court first agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I suggested that Roe v. Wade, in practice at least, wouldn’t be affected regardless of how the court ruled. Right on cue, Joe Biden declared his commitment to seeing Roe v. Wade become federal law regardless of their decision. “The president is committed to codifying Roe, regardless of the … outcome of this case,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.
When the Senate failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act in 2022 ahead of the SCOTUS ruling on Roe, Biden was outraged, and he renewed his pledge to see abortion without restrictions become the law of the land:
“This failure to act comes at a time when women’s constitutional rights are under unprecedented attack – and it runs counter to the will of the majority of American people. We will continue to defend women’s constitutional rights to make private reproductive choices as recognized in Roe v. Wade nearly half a century ago, and my Administration will continue to explore the measures and tools at our disposal to do just that.”
Looking ahead to the 2024 election, Joe Biden is promising to codify abortion nationwide should he win reelection. “Donald Trump is the reason Roe v. Wade has ended,” Biden posted on his X account. “If you reelect me and @KamalaHarris, we’ll be the reason it’s restored.”
On a technical basis, it can be argued that Donald Trump is responsible for “overturning” the non-existent right to murder an unborn child. But when we look at it through the lens of truth, it’s simply not true to say Trump is pro-life.
Donald Trump has ALWAYS been pro-abortion, going back to the days before he entered the political arena. For example, in a 1999 interview with NBC News — Trump was registered with the Independence Party at the time — he said that he was “very pro-choice” before playing the “it’s a personal thing” card. “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it … I just believe in choice.”
However, when Trump decided to run for president as a Republican in 2016 — his party affiliation changed from the Independence Party to Democrat to Republican to Independent to Republican since making his pro-choice declaration — his view on murdering babies in the womb had “evolved” to the point that he called himself pro-life in a 2015 GOP presidential debate. Trump also said in a 2015 interview with Sean Hannity that he supported funding the “good parts” of Planned Parenthood.
Once he had secured the 2016 nomination, Trump reverted back to his earlier views on abortion. In an April 2016 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, he said that the laws regarding abortion are set “and I think we have to leave it that way.” Not surprisingly, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, held the same position.
Despite his pro-abortion track record before the 2016 election, so-called pro-life groups used Trump’s faux opposition to abortion throughout his presidency to pad their bank accounts with millions of dollars, and evangelicals hailed him as “the most pro-life president in history.” With no one standing up for life nor holding Donald Trump accountable during his presidency, abortion and Planned Parenthood funding exploded under his so-called leadership, thus allowing the wholesale slaughter of unborn babies to continue as it always had ever since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
Trump was also instrumental in harvesting of aborted-baby body parts. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been in the business of harvesting aborted-baby body organs for years, thanks in large part to so-called pro-life Republicans and Trump.
In the months leading up to the 2016 election, we learned of the moral and legal implications of harvesting aborted-baby organs when the anti-abortion group, Center for Medical Progress, provided undercover-video evidence of Planned Parenthood facilities harvesting baby parts for profit. Yet, when Trump and the Republican Party were handed the trifecta of power in 2016 — based in large part on their campaign promise to defend life and defund Planned Parenthood — they increased funding to Planned Parenthood, making it possible for them to set a record for baby-killing.
Following the reversal of Roe last year — something Donald Trump likes to hold up as proof of his pro-life bona fides — he took a new position with the abortion issue even as the number of them continue to increase following the SCOTUS decision. Trump is now calling for a “state’s rights” solution to abortion — life is NOT a 10th Amendment issue — telling voters to “follow [their] heart” concerning abortion, but not if it prevents the party from winning elections.
Trump is also using his “states’ rights” approach to abortion as an excuse not to support a national ban.
As I documented during their 2020 matchup, arguing about the differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is like arguing about how to pronounce tomato (tomayto or tomahto); in the end, they are both the same kind of political fruit. They’ll continue playing the duopoly’s “the other party is worse” game, but when it comes to abortion, it doesn’t matter who’s elected because tyranny wins and liberty loses either way.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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