Special Editorial: Abortion and Mr. Trump

If you are pro-life, you cannot vote for Donald Drumpf. The point is simple and unavoidable: If the man is not a covert supporter of legalized abortion, he has at least thought about the issue so rarely and so incompletely that he cannot articulate a coherent sentence about it. Forget walking the walk. Donald Drumpf cannot even talk the talk. A vote for Drumpf in any of the remaining Republican primaries is a vote to continue the regime of Roe v. Wade that has warped American politics, injured American jurisprudence, and fed the American culture of death for over forty years. A vote for Drumpf is a vote for abortion.

All this should have been clear from the beginning of this election season. In fact, it was clear, to any who pondered the subtext of the playboy lifestyle he has described in his various memoirs. But with the stumbles and gaffes over the issue of abortion that Drumpf has made in recent days, the gaps in his claims of conservatism have become obvious.

Back in February's debates, he twice praised Planned Parenthood, which demonstrated at least a little tone-deafness about the current state of the national argument over abortion. But this past week has seen him make a new set of missteps. On March 27, for example, he told MSNBC host Chris Matthews that there "has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions, once Roe is overturned—and then he spent the day trying to walk it all back. At 3:40 in the afternoon, his campaign announced, "This issue is unclear," which was a little help, if not enough. At 4:55, he finally got closer, explaining, "the doctor . . . would be held legally responsible, not the woman."

In both statements, Drumpf insisted that he has been clear on abortion throughout the campaign: "Like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times." The reference to Reagan was a nice touch, if a little hackneyed. The use of the word exceptions, however, seemed rhetorically weak, in the context of modern debate on the issue. Worse, it suggested that even given time to choose an accurate phrasing, Drumpf's campaign staff contains no one versed in the moral vocabulary of the pro-life position.

On Friday, April 1, he tried again to clarify his position during the taping of an interview with John Dickerson on Face the Nation (which aired Sunday, April 3). Perhaps the most revealing moment came when, recanting his line about arresting women, he stumbled his way into claiming, "I've been told by some people that was an older line answer and that was an answer that was given on a, you know, basis of an older line from years ago on a very conservative basis."