White Dudes Can Defend the Unborn, Too

M y yellow-taxicab driver declared the Democratic vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, a dud within an hour or so of his announcement as Kamala Harris’s running mate. As a New York City cab driver might do. “Is Minnesota even in play?” he protested. “This is about abortion, isn’t it?” he asked a bit nervously. He was relieved when I agreed with him.

Billy told me he really doesn’t have a right to have an opinion on “a woman’s right to choose” because he’s a man. But when I encouraged him to follow the science and stand up for the innocent, he played a different tune. “I’m adopted. . . . I wouldn’t be here if my birth mother chose abortion. Abortion is evil. But we’re not supposed to say that.” He even showed me photos of both his biological and his adopted parents.

That’s not a typical New York City conversation, but you never know what you might encounter during an election year.

Harris doubled down on her abortion extremism by making the Minnesota governor her running mate. After the Supreme Court Dobbs decision gave states room to make decisions about abortion, Walz signed into law legislation declaring, “Every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive health care.” And: “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth, or obtain an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right.” Also: “The Minnesota Constitution establishes the principles of individual liberty, personal privacy, and equality. Such principles ensure the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”

We can put aside for the moment that only women, not individuals in general, get pregnant. We live at a time when Americans are apprehensive about regulations on abortion — in no small part because of confusion about ethics and policy in health care. Still, most Americans are not where the Democratic Party is, if they even know where the Democratic ticket is. Platitudes about freedom, and euphemisms, obscure reality.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made a comment about how abortion makes not only women but also men freer. As a “white dude for Harris,” he declared, “I’m so glad she has made freedom the theme of her campaign, and I think in so many ways that’s what’s at stake. And, yes, women’s freedom is Exhibit A after Donald Trump demolished the right to choose. But, of course, men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion care.”

There are already so many sources of coercion for women — and young girls — to have abortions. To pretend that Buttigieg and Walz are doing women any favors in the name of freedom is a lie.

Anyone who has ever spent time outside an abortion clinic knows that many women are not exercising complete freedom when they enter those doors. They are often in misery and under the strong arm of a man who doesn’t want to have to be responsible for his actions. I often think of my own time outside clinics, watching men who don’t even get out of their cars to accompany their girlfriends inside. It’s cold, so he wants heat. It’s hot, so he wants air-conditioning. All he seems to care about is that the deed be done.

The law that Walz signed in Minnesota is one of the most radical in the union. Rejecting informed consent. Allowing abortion even after birth. On the other side of the spectrum, of course, you can listen to Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance’s past comments to Tucker Carlson about cat-owning ladies’ not having skin in the game when it comes to family policy. That, too, shows an insensitivity to the realities of life. Infertility is such a widely unacknowledged agony, especially for couples who suffer miscarriages — real death that is often treated as a mere medical symptom. And as both parties pander to show their support for in vitro fertilization, they ignore the fact that whatever Americans feel about the morality of such treatments, they are financially out of reach for most and a meager measure of hope for those who have the money to try.

There is going to be a lot of back-and-forth about family policy this campaign season. Vance sees himself as creative about government intervention relative to the rest of the Right. Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was an advocate of paid family leave in his last administration. Meanwhile, Harris’s and Walz’s support for late-term and even after-birth abortion may sound unbelievable but is real and immiserating. There’s a meeting place, and it involves our admitting that having children is hard and expensive. Housing more often than not can be the reason a mother feels coerced into an abortion. Instead of pretending that abortion is freedom, or making fun of single women, how about a substantive debate about what might help families flourish and make marriage and children viable for more individuals?

I’ve been involved in good-faith efforts that nudge the Right and the Left when it comes to policies to help families — tax credits, for a start. Our politics is crazy enough that we might just give such proposals a try. There are no such incentives in a presidential-election year, but the effort should be insisted upon anyway.

Women and men, both, need to step up to the plate in defense of the unborn and of families. My taxi driver knew better — in no small part in gratitude for his life — and we all do, don’t we?

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.