Ramesh’s excellent book on abortion in America, The Party of Death, ought to be dusted off this month and year. In it he wrote a brilliant speech for Hillary Clinton, in which she would say:
“We should all be able to agree that 1.3 million abortions a year is way too many, and we should work together to bring that number down. The most important thing we can do is to give women more options. We need to balance the federal budget. But let’s do it by ending giveaways to big corporations that don’t need the money — not by cutting programs that help women take care of their families.
“I’ll admit that like many Americans, my thinking of this issue has changed over the years, and what I’m about to say may trouble some of my oldest friends and allies. I think maybe we’ve been so busy fighting the people who want to throw women in jail that we’ve somehow lost sight of the fact that abortion is a terrible act of violence against the young. If the law can discourage it — without, I want to repeat, making criminals out of women — then we ought to consider it. We ought to have laws that involve parents in their children’s decisions, for example.
“I’m not saying that I have all the answers. I don’t. But I think states ought to be able to try different approaches to protect women and children. And I think the Supreme Court ought to let them. Because America deserves better than abortion, and America deserves better than this fight we’ve been having for over a generation.”
But Democrats like Andrew Cuomo are not into consensus. They prefer radicalism on issues involving sex, trampling over other freedoms, ironically, in the process — stealthily, at times, in the packaging. Remember that the HHS mandate came to us via Obamacare, after the president insisted conscience would be respected (remember Notre Dame?), even going so far as accusing people of lying when they brought up concerns about abortion and conscience. Do we ever learn?