If you do an online search for “Donald Trump Catholic problem,” you’ll see that this has become one of those stories the media love to pick up and run with; post and tweet, rinse and repeat. See, for example, National Review, July 18: “Donald Trump’s Catholic problem.” Forbes, Aug. 23: “Trump has a Catholic problem.” Patch.com, Aug. 29: “Donald Trump’s Catholic Problem.” New York Magazine, Aug. 30: “Trump has a Catholic problem. But how bad is it?” The Washington Post, Aug. 30: “Donald Trump has a massive Catholic problem.”
These headlines sound like an old-timey vaudeville shtick:
“Trump has a big Catholic problem.”
“How big is it?”
“MASSIVE!”
(Side note: Are these journalists paying the same person to write their stuff? Three of the articles begin as follows: “Much has been made of Donald Trump’s problems with voting groups …”; “It’s not exactly a secret that Donald Trump has alienated large sectors of the electorate …”; “It’s no secret that Donald Trump has struggled among traditionally conservative constituencies …”)
Catholic voters are kind of like “moderate” Republican primary candidates: the media love to trot them out and fawn all over them while they’re useful. But once that’s done, the long knives come out. Thus, for a group that despises Donald Trump the way the press does, Catholics suddenly become a terribly important constituency to make happy. (Once the presidential election is over, of course, Catholics’ pesky opposition to abortion, assisted suicide and sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage will make them anathema again.)
It’s true that evangelical Protestants are far more likely to vote for conservative Republicans. Catholics, on the other hand, have a great deal of immigration in their family histories, a natural sympathy for those discriminated against and a devotion to a decidedly leftish view of “social justice” – all of which make them far more receptive to Democratic candidates’ positions.
But it’s not as if Catholics’ favoring Democratic presidential candidates is a new phenomenon. Forty-seven percent of Catholics voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. (In his re-election, that number rose to 55 percent.) Barack Obama got 53 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008 and 49 percent (Romney received 48 percent) in 2012.
Donald Trump’s bombastic personality, his comments about illegal immigrants and various aspects of his personal life do not sit well with many Catholics, and a significant number – if polls are correct – intend to vote for Hillary Clinton in November.
But Clinton should give Catholic voters far more pause than she apparently does.
It is not merely her participation in the Obama administration’s deceit about the Benghazi terrorist attack, her own lack of competence and deceit in maintaining a private email server, or the increasingly unsavory “pay-to-play” allegations that access to her as secretary of state was obtained by multi-million dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation.
It is Hillary Clinton’s loyalty to “Big Abortion” and the implications for her Supreme Court picks that should concern Catholics, and anyone else with a modicum of respect for constitutional liberties.
Far too many Catholics see the issue as strictly one of the legality of abortion, and thus a thing decided. In conversations with my own Catholic friends who are #NeverTrumps or other erstwhile Hillary supporters, their argument goes something like, “Abortion is already legal, and you can’t be a one-issue voter.”
Abortion’s legality is not the issue. It is the confluence of other legal trends applied to abortion that I think bodes ill for Catholics under a Hillary Clinton administration.
I have said all along – and still maintain – that the HHS contraception mandate was a stalking horse. Most people – including most Catholics – don’t care much about contraception. But the Obama administration was field-testing the precedent of having an unaccountable regulatory agency issue a potentially controversial regulation. If the public doesn’t like it, it takes congressional legislation to overturn it – legislation a Democratic president would swiftly veto. Thus, the staying power of any such law rests with the Supreme Court, not Congress.
It is all-too easy to see how a comparable regulation could be written in a Hillary Clinton administration, making abortion mandatory care under the Affordable Care Act, which would thereafter have to be covered by insurance policies and paid for by employers. Hillary is a tool for NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood, both of which we can expect to push for abortion to be covered care. (This is doubly true now that we’ve seen “safe, legal and rare” taken out of the Democratic Party platform, and activists actually promoting abortion with their #ShoutYourAbortion social media campaigns.)
But such a mandate would mean nothing if there are few doctors who will perform elective abortions, or few hospitals where they are allowed to be performed. The next step must therefore be to compel physicians and hospitals to perform and offer abortions. This is the tactic we have seen with gay marriage activists who have sued florists, cake makers and photographers who did not wish to participate in a gay marriage ceremony.
And this is where the Supreme Court’s disposition toward religious liberty arguments becomes so critical. Defendants in the gay marriage cases have attempted – largely unsuccessfully – to assert religious objections – just as the Green family did when they objected to paying for abortifacient contraception in the Hobby Lobby case. The Greens won, but it was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent made her own views quite clear. Ginsburg objected to “commercial enterprises” being allowed to assert “sincerely held religious beliefs” that, as she viewed it, interfered with the “compelling government interest in uniform compliance with the law.”
How does that play out if abortion becomes “covered care” within the meaning of the Affordable Care Act? Hospitals are commercial enterprises. Doctors’ offices are commercial enterprises. How will Catholic and other Christian medical providers who oppose abortion (and assisted suicide, by the way) fare in a Supreme Court with Hillary Clinton appointees, a court where Justice Ginburg’s views are the majority?
Objections to a Hillary Clinton presidency are not just “about abortion.” They are grounded in concerns about executive overreach, an unaccountable regulatory state, an overpowered judiciary and serious potential threats to religious freedom.
This should give Hillary a serious problem among serious Catholics.
|
|
