MICHELLE GOLDBERG: Trump loves a culture war

Friday, Feb. 8, 2019 -- The State of the Union address Tuesday night was, as expected, an interminable farrago of boasting, nativism, saccharine clichés and outright lies. Among the biggest of those lies were Donald Trump's claims about third-trimester abortion.

Posted 10:00 a.m. Feb 8, 2019 — Updated 10:00 a.m. Feb 8, 2019

EDITOR'S NOTE: Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist for The New York Times since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues.

The State of the Union address Tuesday night was, as expected, an interminable farrago of boasting, nativism, saccharine clichés and outright lies. Among the biggest of those lies were Donald Trump’s claims about third-trimester abortion.

“Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth,” he said of the state’s recent Reproductive Health Act. He added, “And then we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth.”

That governor, Ralph Northam, is not an easy man to defend at the moment, given the vile racist photographs recently discovered in his medical school yearbook, and the way he’s clinging to office despite near-universal Democratic calls for his resignation. Nevertheless, Northam’s words about a proposed change to Virginia abortion law — one with no chance of passing — have been grossly and cynically mischaracterized by the right in the service of ginning up a moral panic.

Northam, speaking on the radio, was responding to a ridiculous hypothetical, floated by the Republican majority leader in the Virginia House of Delegates, about a woman in labor getting a doctor’s certification to obtain an abortion for mental health reasons.

The governor made the mistake of taking this scenario seriously. He surely knew, even if the Republican lawmaker did not, that in Virginia, when a woman terminates a pregnancy because the fetus has severe abnormalities and can’t survive outside the womb, it falls under the rubric of protecting her mental health. (The law has no separate exception for fetal viability.) He, therefore, described what would actually happen if, during labor, grave fetal health problems were discovered. The infant, he said, would be delivered and kept comfortable while the family decided how to proceed. He was not advocating killing newborns, which is illegal, and would remain so under the proposed change to Virginia’s law.

It also remains illegal under New York’s new law, which, among other things, allows for terminations after 24 weeks when a fetus isn’t viable or when a woman’s health is at risk. Previously, such abortions were allowed only to save a woman’s life. The New York Civil Liberties Union, in documenting the injustices of the old law, described the ordeal of a woman named Sophia who unexpectedly became pregnant while battling five types of cancer.

“Sophia learned that the fetus had multiple severe anomalies as a result of her cancer treatment, and was unlikely to survive after birth,” the group wrote. “However, because Sophia’s pregnancy was beyond New York’s 24-week legal limit, providers would not take the apparent legal risk associated with performing an abortion.” She ended up traveling 2,000 miles to have the procedure in another state.

There’s probably no way to get anti-abortion conservatives to let go of the idea that the pro-choice agenda involves the wanton killing of full-term babies. Some genuinely believe that liberals and feminists practice something akin to human sacrifice. (“It is clear Moloch has worshipers today and to this false god the children of America are being offered up on the altars of autonomy and choice,” said a Christian Post op-ed about New York’s new abortion law.) Others, like Trump, are indifferent to the complicated reality and simply delighted by the opportunity to adopt a pose of moral sanctimony.

Trump clearly views late abortion as an expedient wedge issue; in his State of the Union address, he called on Congress to pass a law banning abortion “of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.” While such a law has no chance in the current Congress, the proposal is a useful reminder that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion law won’t simply be left to the states, because the anti-abortion movement is eager to pass national restrictions.

After the State of the Union, abortion opponents, among the president’s most loyal backers, were ebullient. “Once again President Trump has proved he is our nation’s most #ProLife president ever,” tweeted the Susan B. Anthony List.

Their satisfaction may, however, be misplaced. Late abortion is a complex issue, and a great many Americans find it deeply disturbing. Trump, however, is so hated that he tends to turn many people against whatever it is he argues for. (It’s part of the reason support for both immigration and Obamacare has risen during his tenure.) There may be no better way to persuade the ambivalent that late abortions are sometimes a tragic necessity than for Trump to floridly denounce them.

I’m not looking forward to yet another reprise of the abortion wars. But if someone’s going to lead an old-fashioned family values charge, it might as well be the living embodiment of louche male chauvinism, a man who refuses to say whether he has ever paid for an abortion himself. Trump is incapable of telling the truth, but he’s a pretty honest symbol of the patriarchal ideals of the movement that’s made him its champion.

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