Mike Pompeo is right about need for national abortion debate | Opinion
Today, I agree with Mike Pompeo.
It’s a phrase I don’t write often about the former secretary of state, CIA director and Kansas congressman, so enjoy it while it lasts.
The occasion for bringing this up is a move by the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to take control of the party platform and “streamline” it to match Trump’s vision of what America should be.
Trump is facing pushback from Christian conservatives, the beating heart of the Republican Party, who worry their views, especially on abortion, will be pushed aside.
They’re right to be worried.
For decades, America lived under Roe v. Wade, a compromise between the total ban favored by extremists on the right and the unrestricted access favored by extremists on the left.
Those guardrails are gone, courtesy of Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices.
So we’re left with Republicans painting Democrats as supporting abortion up until the time of birth, or even after.
And we have Democrats painting Republicans as wanting mothers to bleed to death in an emergency room, rather than terminate a pregnancy that has gone disastrously wrong.
Both those pictures are ridiculous caricatures. Have you ever actually met a Democrat who’s for infanticide, or a Republican who wants to kill moms?
Me neither.
Pompeo took this up in Saturday’s episode of “This Week on the Hill” on the Salem News Network.
At this point you may be asking, “What’s the Salem News Network?”
You may also be asking, “Why would anyone call their network that, when the first thing anybody thinks of when they hear the word ‘Salem’ is witch hunts, and the second is menthol cigarettes for white people?”
I can’t answer the second question, but the answer to the first is that Salem News is a three-year-old TV network that’s part of Salem Communications, which also owns 117 Christian conservative radio stations across the country and a stable of other right-leaning properties, including the websites townhall.com and pjmedia.com, which you probably have heard of.
Anyway, I found myself nodding in agreement while listening to Pompeo talk about the need for Republicans to come to consensus on abortion, and then present their case to the American people.
“I think it’s a mistake for Republicans to avoid such an important and critical issue,” Pompeo said. “And I know it’s controversial, people have a wide range of views, but I think it is so central to who we are as Americans to understand the value of every human life.
“As a political matter, President Trump has said he has exceptions for rape and incest and life of the mother. We can have that debate, but I think it’s fundamentally the case that we as a nation have a responsibility to protect the unborn in every way that we can. It will be difficult to get federal legislative limits, I would encourage Congress to work on that. There has to be an outer limit at the very least at the federal level. This would be the deep, proper, moral thing to do.”
Though we may have differences on where to draw the line, I agree with Pompeo that it’s a discussion and decision that has to happen at the national level via the political process.
I don’t think anybody feels well-served by the status quo, where abortion is legal in Kansas, but a serious crime just across the state line in Missouri.
Absent judicial or congressional guidelines, it’s incumbent on both political parties to step up and provide clear leadership, to say exactly where they stand and why they stand there.
Parties exist to discuss, debate, and ultimately hammer out a platform that a large and diverse group of people can agree on.
Then, they’re supposed to take that platform before voters and convince them that theirs is the best way, or at least better than the other side’s way.
If they can’t even do that, what reason do they have for existing at all?
