Baby Butchery is Not A "Small Issue" to Christ the King

A former friend of mine who has been a former friend longer than our friendship lasted said to me at one point in the 1990s, “Just shut up about the Faith and teach political science.”

Well, despite my many faults and failings, I have always seen it as my solemn duty to speak about the Holy Faith no matter what it might cost me in terms of earthly career success or popularity. I knew from the earliest days of my teaching career fifty years ago this very year that I had a responsibility to the young students, whose immortal souls had been redeemed by shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to plant the seeds of Catholic truth as it is impossible to understand politics without understanding human nature, and it is impossible to understand human nature without understanding Special Creation, Original Sin, and Our Lord’s Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross.

True, perhaps it might have been the case that I could have gotten academic tenure if only “shut up” and taught political science from a purely secular perspective. However, I was always aware of the fact that the students in front of me at any time of my career might never have had the opportunity to be introduced to supernatural truths if I kept my mouth shut. Also, I was also cognizant of the fact that my life could end unexpectedly and that I would be held to account very severely by Our Lord for being silent about what I know to be true in order to curry favor with men and to protect myself according to the prudence of the flesh.

Similarly, I knew that my various forays into electoral politics when I ran for office three times on the Right to Life Party of the State of New York and my serving as a volunteer surrogate speaker for the Buchanan for President campaign from December of 1995 through March of 1996 would do my academic career no favors at all. I ran so that I could voice to the truth and perhaps help a few people to understand that there are objective truths that have been revealed by God Himself through His Holy Church and/or exist in the nature of things that do not depend upon human acceptance for their binding force and validity.

To wit, one of the reasons that I reluctantly permitted my name to be placed in nomination at the Right to Life Party convention in 1998 as the delegates were deciding whether to cross endorse United States Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato or leave the slate blank because of his having convinced formerly “pro-life” Republicans such as a little known New York State Senator from Peekskill, New York, named George Elmer Pataki to abandon their previous partly pro-life, partly pro-abortion positions in order to curry favor with pro-death voters in the abortion capital of the United States of America, the State of New York. Peekskill, New York, George Elmer Pataki.

With D’Amato’s encouragement, Pataki engineered the removal of the pro-life plank from the party platform at the party’s 1990 state convention, and it was at that convention that then United States Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato told New York University professor Herbert London, an Orthodox Jew who is partly pro-life and partly pro-abortion (making the immoral “life of the mother” “exception), that he, London, could be the Republican nominee for Governor of the State of New York that year if he became “pro-choice.” (This is what Dr. London told me in 1998 when during my 1998 campaign. D’Amato claimed that he had no recollection of saying any such thing.)  London ran on the Conservative Party line and came within several thousand votes of beating the pro-abort who got the Republican gubernatorial nomination that year, a man named Pierre Rinfret, for second place in the election against the Democratic Party incumbent, the Catholic pro-abort named Mario Matthew Cuomo.

Selling out the cause of the innocent preborn has become a shopworn tradition in the ranks of “establishment” Republicans, who have long believed that the issue was a losing one. As explained about three weeks ago in Truth Can Never Be Sacrificed on the Altar of Political Expediency, pro-life activists within the Republican Party fought back efforts on the part of Robert Joseph Dole, Jr, in 1996, John Sidney McCain III in 2008, and Willard Mitt Romney in 2012 to water down the party’s pro-life plank, a battle that was particularly hard fought at the 1996 national convention in San Diego, California. It was not until this year, 2024, that the plank finally got watered down at the insistence of former President Donald John Trump, who is now saying that abortion is a “very small issue.” Not to Christ the King, Mister President, and not to the butchered babies whose souls are in Limbo and will never know the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.

Here is a news report concerning “Pope Donald’s” latest ex cathedra pronouncements:

PALM BEACH, Florida (LifeSiteNews) – Former President and current Republican White House nominee Donald Trump declined Thursday to answer how he’ll vote as a Florida resident on an upcoming referendum to enshrine a “right” to abortion in the state constitution. For now, he would only predict the amendment would pass and suggested abortion was no longer a significant political issue.

Amendment 4, the so-called “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” If enacted, it would require abortion to be allowed for any reason before fetal “viability” and render post-“viability” bans effectively meaningless by exempting any abortion that an abortionist claims is for “health” reasons.

The amendment ostensibly says that it “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.” But Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned that “there’s a difference between consent and notification. Notification is after the fact. The consent is obviously a condition precedent. They did that because they know going after parents’ rights is a vulnerability.”

Just this week, the pro-life group Vote No on 4 warned that the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “which drafted and defended both Michigan’s amendment and Florida’s Amendment 4, recently filed a lawsuit based on Michigan’s abortion amendment to overturn that law prohibiting public funding of abortion and to compel Michigan to provide taxpayer funding of abortion through Medicaid,” meaning the amendment will be used to do the same in Florida.

Both sides are deeply invested in the outcome of Florida’s abortion battle this fall that could not only erase all of Florida’s current pro-life laws but will either continue or break a trend of pro-life losses at the ballot box since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

DeSantis and pro-lifers across the country have been working to build enough awareness and opposition to keep the amendment from getting the 60% support it needs to pass in November. 

But Trump, the leader of the GOP and arguably the most influential Republican in America, has so far refused to share an opinion about it despite the fact that opposing it would not conflict with his current position on abortion: leave legality to be decided by individual states, include exceptions in pro-life laws (the Florida heartbeat law the amendment would validate contains exceptions, and defeating the amendment would merely preserve the legislature’s right to continue making such decisions), and frame Democrats as the “real radicals” for their support of late-term abortion and infanticide.

During a wide-ranging press conference at the 45th president’s Mar-a-Lago resort home, Trump was asked how he would vote on the amendment in his capacity as a resident of the Sunshine State.

“I’m going to actually have a press conference on that at some point in the near future. So I don’t want to tell you now,” Trump replied. “But Florida does have a vote coming up on that and I think probably the vote will go in a little more liberal way than people thought. But I’ll be announcing that at the appropriate time.”

“I think that abortion has become much less of an issue. It’s a very I think it’s actually going to be very small issue,” he went on. “I think the abortion issue has been taken down many notches. I don’t think it’s — I don’t think it’s a big factor anymore, really.”

Trump was also asked again about the Biden Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of distributing abortion pills through the mail. He suggested he would prefer a vote be held on the issue but did not rule out executive action on the matter in a possible shift from his June endorsement of the Supreme Court’s decision to let the FDA rule stand. 

“You could do things that would supplement. Absolutely,” he said. “And those things are pretty open and humane. But you have to be able to have a vote, and all I want to do is give everybody a vote. There are many things on a humane basis that you can do outside of that.”

The Florida chapter of the ACLU seized on Trump’s prediction, telling him “thanks for the vote of confidence!”

Since 2022, Trump has staked out a middle ground on abortion that closes the door on banning abortion nationally in favor of relegating future abortion battles to the states while expressing indifference to what policies states ultimately adopt except to occasionally chide pro-life actions he deems too “harsh.” Last week, he took credit for making the GOP “much less radical” on the issue.

Last month, at its 2024 nominating convention, the GOP adopted a dramatically shortened platform drafted and promoted by Trump surrogates, which among other changes cut the party’s longstanding support for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and a federal law extending equal protection to preborn babies in favor of leaving abortion policy to individual states; it also endorsed birth control (many common methods of which function as abortifacients) and embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization.

Trump’s declaration that a strong, consistent pro-life stance is “radical” contrasts sharply with the generally pro-life record he committed to in exchange for pro-life support in 2016, and is more in line with his “pro-choice” past as a celebrity businessman.

National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH currently indicate that Vice President Kamala Harris has narrowly overtaken Trump in both national polling and Electoral College projections since replacing President Joe Biden as Democrats’ presumptive nominee, although it remains to be seen if her choosing for her running mate radically-left-wing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who faces a scandal over past misrepresentations of his military service, swings the race back in Trump’s favor. (Trump suggests Florida pro-abortion amendment may pass, still refuses to say how he'll vote.)

Here are several quick comments as there is no need to repeat everything that I have written in the past year (Memorandum to Donald John Trump: The Inviolability of Innocent Human Life is Non-Negotiable, Your "Pro-Life" President is At It Again, Another Memorandum to Clueless Don from Queens: Catholics Do Not Compromise on Truth, Pontius Trump Washes His Hands of the Blood of Innocent Babies, and "The Mutable Will of the People") about Donald John Trump’s repeated efforts to disparage pro-life absolutism as “radical” or “extreme” and to express repeated support for the evil that is in vitro fertilization and contraception.

First, refusing to take a position against the proposed amendment to the Florida State Constitution that would nullify all existing “pro-life” legislation enacted into law (quotation marks are used around the phrase “pro-life” as such laws contain “exceptions”) is an act of undisguised political cowardice.

Trump will probably come out in opposition to the amendment at some point before November 5, 2024, although it is my surmise that, given his record of equivocation in the past twelve months, he will do so by expressing “understanding” for those voters who support the amendment and by stating that he would “live” with the results after the “people” had “decided” the matter. Here is a reminder: the “people” have no authority to “decide” anything about the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment. Every human being is duty bound to obey the Commandments, including the Fifth Commandment, over which no one—whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance or by means of a popular referendum—has any authority from God to contravene.

Second, the butchery of innocent human beings is not a “small issue” to Christ the King and, as noted above, it is not a “small issue” to the millions upon millions of slaughtered children who have been deprive of life here on earth and of life with the Most Holy Trinity for all eternity in Heaven.

While the killing of babies by chemical and surgical means may be a “small issue” or no issue at all to many voters, it is a very big issue to women who have paid to have their children killed and/or those women who want the “option” to do so in case they have an “accident” or do not like the gender of their preborn child or are unwilling to care for a child who is diagnosed as being born with some kind of physical infirmity. Baby butchery may decide who wins some of the “swing states,” and the demagogic ticket of Kamala Harris (see One Dishonest Demagogue Leaves, Another Dishonest Demagogue Enters, part two) and Nicolai Podgorny Timothy James Walz (Flying With Two Far Left Wings) is unequivocally enthusiastic about unrestricted baby-killing.

Why should pro-death voters vote for a candidate who is willing to “let the people decide” what they have no authority to decide, namely, to dispense with innocent human life, when they can vote for candidates who are completely and unequivocally in favor baby-killing up to and even beyond the day of birth?

Senator D’Amato equivocated during the general election against then United States Representative Charles Schumer (D-Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York) after he had defeated me in the primary on September 14, 1998 (he used surrogates to attest to his “pro-life” record during the primary but never once put his own name to any of the statements they issued on his behalf). D’Amato buried the life issue against Schumer, and he lost the general election, on November 3, 1998, by over 492,077 votes (1998 United States Senate election in New York). Voters chose the fully pro-abortion Schumer over the equivocal D'Amato, and Donald John Trump may very well suffer the same fate in some of the “swing states.”

I said it in my own losing primary race twenty-six years ago, and I will say it again now: those who support baby-killing will usually vote for candidates who stand on their pro-death principles because they do not trust the unprincipled positions taken by equivocators.

Third, there is no reason to believe that Donald John Trump will act against the abortion pill in a putative second term as he did not do so his first. His willingness to submit the issue to a “vote” means that he is not going to issue any kind of executive directive that would rescind the September 26, 2000, decision of the United States Food and Drug Administration permitting the marketing of the human pesticide. It is that simple. Do not believe in the political tooth fairy.

Finally, this might all be quite academic as the ticket of Kamala Harris Emhof and Timothy James Walz has pulled ahead in most of the “swing states” and they are likely to get a very significant polling “bounce” that would make it extremely difficult for the ticket of Donald John Trump and James David Vance to pull ahead barring some dramatic turnout produced by one or more of the Trump-Harris debates and the one Vance-Walz debate.

If the “people” are stupid enough to vote according to “vibes” rather than upon a critical examination of issues and the candidates’ record on them, then there is little that equivocators can do to combat such irrationality. Such is the logical result of a world where Christ is not King, a world in which some support evils under the cover of law unequivocally while others put up an equivocal opposition to such evils, if they really put up any kind of principled opposition at all.

Perhaps I have said this before: there is no salvation in politics. Do not believe in the illusion of secular salvation.

We are eyewitnesses to the process of the disintegration of all social order caused by the marriage wrought in the netherworld between the forces of Modernity and those of conciliarism,  which is all the more reason for us to spend time, if at all possible where you live in this time of apostasy and betrayal, before the Blessed Sacrament and by uniting ourselves more fully to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Which beats for us with such love in the Adorable Sacrament of the Altar, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Let us surrender ourselves now and always to the Most Holy Trinity and be ever reliant upon the intercessory power of Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to effect the conversion of men and their nations to the Social Kingship of her Divine Son as the fruit of her Fatima Message and the Triumph of her own Immaculate Heart, mindful also of the fact that we have a great Wonder Worker in our beloved Saint Philomena.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!   

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saints Tiburtius and Susanna, pray for us.

Saint Emigdius, pray for us.