Trump blunders. But is his fall what we should wish for?

It seems the age of wonders is not past. Even Donald Trump has had to backtrack at last. He’s trying to wriggle out of what he told MSNBC about abortion. It’s left him looking just like any ordinary politician who has “misspoken.”

Initially, he said that abortion should be made illegal. Then he went one step further, arguing that women who nonetheless persisted in having an abortion – an illegal abortion – ought to be subject to “some form of punishment.” Finally, he nailed his colours to the ‘pro-Life’ mast.

CNN reproduces Trump's unfortunate interview on MSNBC

It seems he may, finally, have made one gaffe too many. Across the Republican party, the statement was greeted with horror. The Guardian quoted Mallory Quigley, speaking for an anti-abortion Political Action Committee, who questioned Trump’s commitment to the ‘pro-Life’ cause and added, “If Donald Trump wants to be a leader, he has to demonstrate that he understands the pro-life position.”

Trump’s now trying to row back from his statement. It seems his approval rating among women is down at the 25% level, which could make it hard for him to win the Presidency, seeing as women are a pretty significant part of the electorate (53% of the turnout at the last election). More immediately, he’s not doing well in the next primary to be held, Wisconsin, where he’s trailing Ted Cruz in the polls.

It’s a fascinating development, isn’t it?

The first aspect that struck me was the language used. I’ve talked about this before. This notion of being ‘pro-Life’ really gets me. What are these characters saying? That the rest of us are in some sense anti-Life? That we like to see a bit of death around the place, just to brighten up our day?

The truth is that we’re neither pro-Death nor even pro-Abortion. It’s hard to imagine who would favour abortion, or why. Those of us in the other camp from Mallory Quigley’s aren’t pro-abortion, we’re simply for a woman’s right to choose. It doesn’t tend to be a light decision to take, and what we maintain is that a woman should be entitled to take it without the moral pressure of the ‘pro-Life’ movement and free of a legal prohibition against it (at least up to a reasonable point in gestation).

Pro-Life? The reality is that they’re opposed to freedom of choice. Which is curious, isn’t it, as they tend to flock around the libertarian right for whom freedom of choice, at least in other fields, is a cardinal principle?

The other aspect of this incident that caught my attention was the effect on the Trump campaign itself. It could very well derail it. Now, I never thought I’d say this, but it worries me if Trump is denied the nomination at this stage – because the damage he’s done to his own standing means that he’s unlikely to beat a Democratic opponent, whether Clinton or Sanders, in November.

What worries me is the thought that Cruz might sneak in and take the nomination, because he could prove harder for the Democrats to beat. He may be a quieter man, but underneath the surface he’s at least as dangerous as Trump, possibly more so. In particular, there’s no doubt of his ‘pro-Life’ credentials, in other words, his vehement opposition to freedom of choice for women.

It’s a lot of fun watching that buffoon Trump blunder and shoot himself in the foot. Just as long as we don’t end up with Cruz instead. Because then the last laugh might be a very bitter one indeed.

How Wendy Davis stands up for us all. And Nigel Farage demeans us.

Every now and then, in the midst of all the ghastly and demoralising examples we see of morally rotten if not actually corrupt behaviour by politicians, we come across an instance of real courage and decency.

When it comes to rottenness, we have for some time been exposed to an instructive example in England, for instance. Here we’ve been enjoying the antics of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, ostensibly campaigning for British ‘independence’ from ‘Europe’. This is an extraordinary position to take, particularly at a time when:

• we have just seen the sentencing a teacher who absconded with a fifteen-year old pupil and was only brought to justice thanks to a European Arrest Warrant 
• it has become apparent that the only thing standing between us and continued intrusive snooping into our daily lives by the security services is the European Convention on Human Rights 
• there is a chance of signing the biggest trade deal in history, one between the US and the EU

The reality is that UKIP is in fact anti-immigration, which means that it’s based on a lie. ‘Anti-immigration’ sounds superficially reasonable when it argues that we need to protect domestic resources for our own people, but it is in fact just a cover for racism: none of the anti-immigrant ranters ever denounces immigration by white English-speakers, from the Commonwealth, say, or the United States.

But it isn’t surprising that UKIP has a lie at its core. Its leader is Nigel Farage, who likes to present himself with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, as a shining example of the ordinary Brit you could meet in a pub anywhere.

Actually, that may be true: I’ve met some pretty toxic individuals in pubs.

Above all he puts a lot of effort into cultivating an image of honesty. ‘You can trust me, guv’, that kind of thing. Sadly, the last politician who tried that was Tony Blair and look where that led. And it’s no different with Farage. He’s spoken forcefully against tax havens in the European Parliament (yes, not the least paradox of the man is that the only body to which he’s managed to get elected is the European parliament, from which he wants us to withdraw). Yet it recently emerged that he set himself up a special account in the tax haven of the Isle of Man. ‘A mistake,’ he’s assured us since, but isn’t that the plea of every politician caught with his hand in the till?

Wendy Davis: inspirational,
as she talks out a bad bill limiting freedom of choice

With the atmosphere being poisoned by men like Farage over here, it was a delight to read about Wendy Davis in Texas. She’s the State Senator who talked out a bill restricting access to abortion, by speaking for ten and a half hours, without taking a break, eating or drinking or even leaning on any furniture. It was an act of great courage and tenacity in defence of an important principle.

A key part of Wendy Davis's armoury in defence of principle:
comfortable shoes to support ten and half hours on her feet

Sadly, Davis has only won a stay of execution. The bill will return and this time Texas Republicans will ensure it has the time to survive any filibuster and become law. The effect, according to today’s Observer, will be to reduce the number of clinics offering abortions in Texas from 42 to five.

Now I fully understand the objections many have to abortion. To be honest, I’ve never met anyone who’s in any sense pro-abortion, least of all the women I know who’ve had one. It’s always seen as a at best a least-bad option. And no-one’s suggesting they should be made obligatory, under any conditions. The other side of the debate is called pro-choice for a reason: it believes women should have that choice, and whichever option they choose, it should be respected.

What is it with people who feel that they have the right to restrict, on the basis of their own convictions, the rights of other people to exercise a choice? Certainly, they have every right to follow their convictions themselves (though I notice that they often don’t, as Farage showed). But those convictions are their own. Others don’t share them. What gives those who uphold certain values the right to impose them on others?

It’s time to proclaim that the equality of rights, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and shared – in principle at least – by other democracies, specifically means not limiting other people’s choices to suit the views of others, however sincerely held.

That’s why we need more courageous and decent politicians like Wendy Davis.

And fewer Farages. Thank you very much.

When losing even one mother looks like carelessness

Traditionally, there was nothing safe about giving birth to a child. 

In many parts of the world, it’s horrendously dangerous even today: in Chad, according to the CIA (yes, these guys taken an interest in everything), the rate of maternal death is 1100 per 100,000 pregnancies; even in far wealthier South Africa, it’s still 300.

That figure is particularly worth comparing with the rate in England as late as 1935, when it was between 500 and 600. In living memory, the rate of maternal death in England was getting on for twice as high as in South Africa today.

The 1935 rate, to set the figures in context, would see around 10 fit, healthy young women dying in England each day as a result of pregnancy. The actual figure is around 80 a year, and about half the women are already ill, most often with cardiological problems.

England now loses around 12 mothers per 100,000 pregnancy, a colossal improvement which perhaps represents one of the most striking advances in medicine in the last couple of centuries. The US does significantly less well despite its hugely more expensive healthcare system (21 per 100,000) but Ireland, curiously, does twice as well, at 6 per 100,000. And yet Ireland is undergoing a major exercise in soul-searching over maternal death, and with good reason.

Savita: tragic victim of rigid adherence to
one principle against all others
and not a litte incompetence

Last October, Savita Halappanavar was admitted to hospital suffering from an infection which was likely to end her 17-week pregnancy. A leaked report has found that medical staff failed to follow up a series of signs, including results of diagnostic tests, instead claiming that they thought it was someone else’s job.

The saddest aspect of this case is that when husband and wife asked for a termination of what was almost certainly a lost pregnancy, staff told them this couldn’t be done in Ireland, because ‘this is a Catholic country’. There could be no question of a termination while it was still possible to detect a foetal heartbeat.

The report concludes that the catastrophic end to the case ‘could have been avoided by earlier termination of pregnancy knowing that – without termination – the prognosis for the fetus and potentially the patient was poor.’

Yes. The prognosis was poor for the unborn child anyway, and refusing the abortion made it poor for the mother. 

In the event, after seven days in hospital, she went into septic shock and died.

Instead of losing just the baby, a rigid commitment to the principle of banning abortion led to the mother being lost too – condemned to die by ‘pro-life’ thinking.

Commitment to principle is often commendable. But simplistic commitment to one principle above all others is miserably limited and, as this case shows, potentially dangerous. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is surely an attractive principle only to those who don’t want to see below the surface of ethics. No principle has been so honoured in the breach. Why, Christianity which proclaims it came to power in Rome thanks to the Emperor Constantine’s success in war. And that’s without mentioning the crusades.

Any morality worthy of the name has to recognise that it will be woven of a wide range of principles that sometimes contradict; the points of contradiction are its real tests, because they can’t be addressed by simply referring to a book or a commandment, however sacred. Instead they depend on the exercise of judgement by people doing the best they can in difficult circumstances.

That certainly failed lamentably in Savita’s case. But what makes it particularly shocking is that in its defence of an unborn child against abortion, this simplistic morality cost both the child’s life and the mother’s. That’s not just a dereliction of duty; it’s shameful.