What to Make of the Herschel Walker Abortion Allegation?

I ’m going to go way out on a limb in the year 2022 and suggest that if the allegation that Herschel Walker paid for his girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 is true, then the morally correct response to the revelation — honesty and contrition — would have also been the politically savvy response.

I know, I know: We are living in a post-Clinton, post-Trump era, in which lying and other types of depravity aren’t supposed to matter at all in elections. Conventional wisdom now holds that the politically savvy response to any and all scandals is deny, deny, deny. But I think the conventional wisdom is wrong in this case.

In case you missed it, on Monday night the Daily Beast reported the following October surprise about the Georgia GOP Senate candidate:

A woman who asked not to be identified out of privacy concerns told The Daily Beast that after she and Walker conceived a child while they were dating in 2009 he urged her to get an abortion. The woman said she had the procedure and that Walker reimbursed her for it.

She supported these claims with a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a “get well” card from Walker, and a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check from Walker.

(An aside: The New York Times also uses the language that Walker “conceived the child” with the woman. If you were wondering what it would take to get the paper of record to acknowledge the scientific fact that new human life exists from the moment of conception, now you know.)

Walker forcefully denied the allegation on Monday night, calling it a “flat-out lie” and saying that he was planning to “sue the Daily Beast for this defamatory lie,” but on Tuesday, Walker’s lawyer said no final decision had been reached on a lawsuit.

“I send money to a lot of people,” Walker said on Hannity on Monday night when asked about allegedly sending a $700 check to the anonymous woman in question. “I never asked anyone to get an abortion; I never paid for an abortion,” he added.

Yes, it’s an anonymous accusation, but given the level of documentation reportedly obtained by the Daily Beast (along with an anonymous friend of the woman who vouched for her claims), this story would likely need to be a total fabrication by the original source — a Rathergate type scandal — for the main allegation to be false.

One of Walker’s own sons does not believe his denial. “It’s literally his handwriting on the card. They say they have receipts, whatever,” Christian Walker said in a video posted on social media. “We were told at the beginning of this [campaign] he was going to get ahead of his past, hold himself accountable — all of these different things — and that would have been fine. He didn’t do any of that. Everything’s been a lie.”

“Don’t lie,” he added. “I wouldn’t have spoken out if there weren’t all these lies.” That response from Christian Walker is one reason why (in the likely event the central allegation that Walker paid for the abortion is true) the best political response from Herschel Walker would have been honesty and contrition. The pro-life movement has always welcomed and even celebrated converts. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who performed abortions and helped found NARAL, was a pro-life convert and a hero of the pro-life movement. The Christian religion is also pretty big on repentance and forgiveness, too.

But in light of the allegation and Walker’s not-very-persuasive denial, it seems likely that a critical slice of voters will not vote for Walker because of it.

It does not follow, of course, that pro-life voters horrified by the allegation against Walker will vote for Warnock, who wants to use taxpayer money to pay for millions of abortions:

Research conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute has found that the pro-life budget rider [known as the Hyde amendment] saves 60,000 human lives each year. A 2019 study by researchers from Middlebury College, the Guttmacher Institute, and the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health estimated that overturning Roe would result in 100,000 fewer abortions each year. It is not an exaggeration to conclude that 219 House Democrats plus 52 Senate Democrats could result in more than 300,000 human lives being deliberately destroyed in the womb from 2023 to 2024.

But as Erick Erickson writes, Warnock doesn’t necessarily need voters disgusted by Walker to vote Democratic:

Warnock’s team has one of the most effective TV ad strategies in the country. A particularly devastating ad against Walker is an interview of Walker’s ex-wife on ABC’s Nightline about Walker holding a gun to her head and abusing her. You’d never know from the ad that Walker [participated] in the interview. It was about Walker’s battles with mental health and their shared attempt to raise awareness.

The context does not matter. It’s a damn powerful ad. That ad is having an impact on Christian women who don’t like Warnock but have so many doubts about Walker they may sit it out. Add to that his purported hypocrisy over abortion and the Warnock strategy seems very clear.

They are not trying to get people to vote for Warnock or against Walker. They are trying to get voters to just not vote in that race at all. Warnock thinks all the Democrats will vote for him. All the pro-abortion voters will vote for him. He wants the pro-lifers to just pass the race by and move on to Brian Kemp. He wants independent voters to pass over Walker too.

It’s worth noting that Warnock’s ex-wife has alleged that Warnock ran over her foot with a car, but police who showed up on the scene did not “locate any swelling, redness, or bruising or broken bones.” Warnock has also praised and promoted a virulently antisemitic and anti-American conspiracy theorist.

When a voter thinks both major candidates in an election are morally unfit to hold office, how should that voter cast a ballot? The overwhelming majority of the American people seem to believe the right answer is to determine which candidate’s election would cause worse consequences — and then vote for his opponent. But a certain sliver of the electorate will likely wash its hands of the Georgia Senate race over this story, and the only way Walker could have secured their votes was an honest and contrite response. That slice of the electorate may not be decisive in November, but in this neck-and-neck race it very well could be.