Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 4:30pm

Keeping a Promise

As faithful readers of this blog know, I was a very reluctant, and late, supporter of Donald Trump in 2016.  I grudgingly came on board the Trump Train when he made his pro-life pledge in September:

 Dear Pro-Life Leader: I am writing to invite you to join my campaign’s Pro-Life Coalition, which is being spearheaded by longtime leader Marjorie Dannenfelser.

As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand, and also know where my opponent, Hillary Clinton, stands.

Hillary Clinton not only supports abortion on-demand for any reason, but she’d take it a step further: she wants to force the taxpayers to pay for abortions by repealing the bi-partisan Hyde Amendment. Hillary Clinton also supports abortion until an hour before birth. And she will only appoint Supreme Court justices who share this view.

She doesn’t even try to hide her extremism. When asked on Meet the Press when unborn children have constitutional rights, Clinton bluntly responded, “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.” She is so committed to this view that she proclaimed in a speech that “religious beliefs… have to be changed” in order to advance her abortion agenda.

Hillary Clinton’s unwavering commitment to advancing taxpayer-funded abortion on-demand stands in stark contrast to the commitments I’ve made to advance the rights of unborn children and their mothers when elected president.

I am committed to:

Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.

Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and re-allocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.

Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.

Your help is crucial to make this contrast clear in the minds of pro-life voters, especially those in battleground states. Together we can form this vital coalition so that Mike Pence and I can be advocates for the unborn and their mothers every day we are in the White House.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Trump

I had my doubts that Trump would keep any of this, but I was certain that Clinton would keep every one of her pro-abort promises, so I weighed a doubt against a certainty and went with Trump.

Trump in office has been the most pro-life President since my hero Ronald Reagan.  He keeps giving evidence that on his pro-life pledge he is utterly a man of his word.  A recent example:

On Friday, the Trump Administration’s Office of Population Affairs published the final text of proposed changes that will effectively block Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide or even mention abortions from receiving a type of federal funds.

The new document, which is 312 pages long, outlines a series of rule changes related to how the federal government distributes money allocated for the family planning grant program known as Title X. This program, which was created in 1970 with bipartisan support, provided $286.5 million in 2018 to pay for free or low-cost birth control, as well as other preventive care like STI screenings, for low-income women. Each year, Title X serves 4 million women through healthcare providers who receive grants from the government to provide services. (This would not affect reimbursement by Medicaid, a separate program.)

The major changes include a new requirement that all participating Title X providers “maintain physical and financial separation from locations which provide abortion as a method of family planning.” This means that any clinic or doctor’s office that also offers abortions is no longer allowed to receive federal grants that would help provide free or low-cost birth control for low-income women.

Although a spokesperson from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees Title X, told Refinery29 via email that the Trump administration”seeks to serve more women and men than previously served in the Title X program,” advocates say the new changes will do precisely the opposite.

Reproductive rights advocates say this is a direct attack on Planned Parenthood, which via the organization’s nationwide network of family planning clinics, is currently the largest provider of Title X-funded birth control services. Roughly 41% of patients receiving birth control funded by Title X get those prescriptions at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

In a conference call with the leaders of major medical organizations and reporters this afternoon, Leana Wen, MD, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, described the new rules as “unconscionable” and “unworkable,” and vowed to use “every avenue to make sure this rule never goes into effect.”

Go here to read the rest.  When Trump stands before the God who made him for his particular judgment he will, doubtless, have many sins to answer for, as we all will.  On the credit side of his ledger, his conversion to the pro-life cause will doubtless be at the very top.

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Bob S. In NC
Bob S. In NC
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 6:17am

My support for Trump came about the same way. For that reason, and his faithful pro-life follow through, he retains my support. May he get 1-2 more Supreme Court nominations! Life or death – stark, clear choice.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 8:34am

I’m always amazed by the side that supports death on demand by their accusations against the conservatives..calling us Nazi’s.
My deep hatred..and I know it’s not healthy to hate anyone, for Hillary Clinton is framed around her stance for killing children. I despise her.
Her smirk reminds me of Ted Bundy.
Her self confidence is standing on six million rotting corpses. Her legacy as a human being is being dissolved just like her name in the book of Life. Pray for her? It’s almost impossible but with God I can do it.

God bless Donald Trump.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 9:35am

Reproductive rights advocates say this is a direct attack on Planned Parenthood, which via the organization’s nationwide network of family planning clinics, is currently the largest provider of Title X-funded birth control services. Roughly 41% of patients receiving birth control funded by Title X get those prescriptions at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

I’ve no doubt they have the paperwork to back it up– but I also remember what happened when they audited the Spokane Planned Parenthood clinics. Most of the charges checked were fraud, including counting a visit to pick up a prescription, or get an exam before they’d give you one, or picking up condoms, being counted as a separate event.

father of seven
father of seven
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 9:41am

I would rather be Donald Trump at the last judgment, than nearly any one of our bishops, including the current Bishop of Rome.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 12:43pm

What did Jesus sat about the son who said he would serve and didn’t, vs the one who said he wouldn’t, but did?

I don’t know genuine Trump’s conversion is, maybe he’s just honoring a deal, maybe he’s being pressured by others. Regardless, the children who are born because of this will be grateful.

The perfect Lord must ever work through imperfect vessels.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 1:37pm

The Weasel Words (or Poison Pill, if you prefer) that will save Planned Parenthood are found in “maintain physical and financial separation from locations which provide abortion as a method of family planning. [emph. added]” because nobody plans to have an abortion [sarcastic observation]. Abortion is what happens when a) you fail to plan, or b) your plan fails. [bitter acknowledgement of real world truth].

The poisonous fruit of the sexual revolution.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 1:40pm

That said, I’m not finding fault with Trump here. There is no doubt that Trump is the most pro-life President this country has ever had. For all his moral failings, you have to admit that once Trump is bought, he’s stays bought.

The Bushes and the rest of what once was called the “Rockefeller Wing” of the Republican Party ought take note.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 2:13pm

The Bushes and the rest of what once was called the “Rockefeller Wing” of the Republican Party ought take note.

Neither George W. Bush nor his father are properly characterized as being of ‘the Rockefeller wing’. That’s a strand of thought which had no new blood in Congress after 1983 and which had disappeared almost entirely a decade later. The most troublesome members of the GOP caucus in the last 20 years have been temporizers, not liberals.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 2:31pm

Youse tellin’ me Arlen Specter wasn’t a liberal AND a temporizer?

Thems fighting’ words.

Besides, aren’t liberals temporizers, and temporizers liberal?

Anyways, my point (half point?) was to contrast Trump’s combination of flawed personal morality and political integrity (so far he seems committed to saying what he means and doing what he says) to the Bushes combination of personal morality (G.H.W. in particular, but G.W. stopped drinking and grew up (q.v.), and as far as I know, nobody has a bad word to say about Jeb as a man) with shaky flexible political integrity (I’m mostly thinking of G.H.W., “read my lips” here.)

Mary De Voe
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 2:35pm

“The Weasel Words (or Poison Pill, if you prefer) that will save Planned Parenthood are found in “maintain physical and financial separation from locations which provide abortion as a method of family planning. [emph. added]” because nobody plans to have an abortion [sarcastic observation]. Abortion is what happens when a) you fail to plan, or b) your plan fails. [bitter acknowledgement of real world truth].”
or when Planned Parenthood lies to you and does an abortion on an unpregnant women.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Saturday, February 23, AD 2019 3:32pm

Or when PP sets you up to fail because it knows your dose of progesterone (or whatever) is so low that if you’re human and you forget to take your pill at the same time every day it won’t work,.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 4:26am

I was a believer in Trump from the first moment he announced for President and predicted right here on American Catholic that he would win the Presidential election. He has not disappointed.
A friend sent me the following on Trump the culture warrior.
Fight on, Trump —
“You magnificent bastard”

A description of politics in the US since the mid-sixties.
Evan Douglas Sayet is a comedian and conservative speaker. He is the nation’s leading conservative speaker, an in-demand Master of Ceremony for Republican events. Sayet is the author of The Kinder Garden Of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss.

He Fights . by Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #Never Trumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum.

They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.
We tried propriety: has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Hussain Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.

I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ’60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one and the violent take-over of the universities till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ‘s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.

Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man.He fights . ..”

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastard, I read your book!”That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, but he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics and that’s what they really hate.
That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis . It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media”– and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all” …Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. … They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.

It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up

So, to my friends on the Left and the #Never Trumpers as well do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course, I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you want about this president — I get it — he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this warrior. He fights for America! Fight on,you magnificent bastard!

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 4:48am

Thanks MD for the Evan Sayet Trump-et.
Great synopsis.

stilbelieve
stilbelieve
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 7:55am

Donald Trump is our George Washington for our time.

stilbelieve
stilbelieve
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 9:09am

As for Donald Trump’s pro-life position (real pro-life, not the bishops’ and Cardinal Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life”) it’s definitely the most pro-life position we ever had in a President. We need to help him continue the fight for “God’s will be done on earth…” (which we Catholics pray for standing before Jesus in the Holy Eucharist in every Mass) by getting the largest, single group in the Democrat Party (self-identified Catholics) to remove their endorsement of the Democrat Party and stop voting for it until it becomes pro-life. The last 3 presidential elections, the self-identified Catholic vote for Obama was 54% in 2008, 50% in 2012, and for Hillary Clinton in 2016 it was 48% to Trump’s 45%. Catholics voted for the most pro-abortion presidents ever!

Trump’s victory was a gift to us by God, a temporary one, and we better take care of it by getting our Catholic brothers and sisters out of the party of Satan, for their own salvation. You know it is a mortal sin against the 5th Commandment to join an organization like the Nazi Party or the KKK which promote racial, ethnic or religious hatred “which hurts the feelings of our neighbor.” “To deny any person her or his rights is a sin against justice as well as charity.” (Quotes from “Life in Christ – A Catholic Catechism for Adults (1995).

If it’s a mortal sin against the 5th. Commandment to JOIN the Nazi Party or the KKK, why isn’t it a mortal sin to join the Democrat Party which supports and promotes abortion which does far greater harm to our most helpless neighbor – the unborn, than “hurting her of his feelings.” The only hope and help, for the unborn, is for adult voters voting for pro-life candidates. “To deny any person her or his rights is a sin against justice as well as charity.” Catholics endorsing the Democrat Party with their name and voting for its candidates are denying the unborn person their most important right – their right to life. And in doing so, those Catholics, and possibly their Shepherds, are endangering their own salvation.

Mary De Voe
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 10:02am

I have shared these comments with any one who will listen

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 11:13am

…So have I Mary. We must keep telling them the truth no matter what. The poison will diminish and sight will be restored but it’s our duty to assist Christ in this noble work.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 11:23am

Referencing Lord of the Rings; Just as King Theoden had a rotten adviser, Wormtounge, so too the liberal Catholics of today. They are tired and lethargic. They listen to demented advisers like wormtounge and relinquish their God given rights over to devils who destroy the kingdom.
To hell with the wormtounges. It’s time to make America great again.

CAM
CAM
Sunday, February 24, AD 2019 10:59pm

Trump is the most pro-life president yet. Melania is the first pro-life First Lady.
Let’s not forget VP Pence and his wife – extremely and vocally pro-life.

c matt
c matt
Monday, February 25, AD 2019 11:24am

The three main reasons I voted for Trump were:
1. Not Hildebeast
2. Pro life
3. Humble (aka circumspect) foreign policy.

Two out of three ain’t bad. Of course, with respect to three, he has been better than Hildebeast, but not as good as he promised. I can live with that.

OrdinaryCatholic
OrdinaryCatholic
Monday, February 25, AD 2019 11:59am

Trump was never my first pick in the primaries. But once Trump became the winner in the primaries along with Billery, there was no way this side of hell that I could vote for someone who was so anti-life, anti-religion, power hungry and greedy as Billery so I prayed and prayed that God would have me choose the right person for the job at this time in our lives. I knew Trump wasn’t a saint but I wasn’t voting for a saint just a good leader and president. Billery never fit the bill.

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, February 25, AD 2019 2:13pm

All the current forms of birth control fail, Ernest; they even list the failure stats as “perfect” (for your example, used it at exactly the same time every day, abstained during the stated time, etc) and “normal” (done by humans).

PP sets folks up to fail by salesmanship that leaves folkswith the impression that if they do it “right,” then they’re “safe” from the reproductive act resulting in a child, which makes them feel cheated when a child does result, and easier to sell an abortion to. Because it’s not fair, they did everything right…..

CAM
CAM
Monday, February 25, AD 2019 7:46pm

Good point, Foxfier! The Devil is crafty.

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