I’ve already written that nothing Nancy Pelosi can say about abortion will shock me anymore.
Turns out I was wrong.
Yes, her latest Pelosi Abortion Outrage™, prompted by the entirely appropriate question posed to her by John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, still came as no particular surprise to me:
Asked what the moral difference is between what Dr. Kermit Gosnell did to babies born alive and aborting those same infants moments before birth, Pelosi refused to answer.
“As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.”
Of course, Pelosi’s words are incoherent at best and offensive any way you choose to take them.
Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, thinks her faith shouldn’t have anything to do with politics.
Okay, so what. We already knew that about her.
But what particularly struck me during this latest Pelosi Abortion Outrage™ was this realization:
If not her faith, what does she think should inform her opinion on abortion? Medecine? Science? Biology? Embryology? Fetal pain research? The Natural Law? What?!
This is a question the press never demands to know, and it’s time for the press (and us) to start demanding it.
Pelosi, like so many dissenting Catholics, has chosen to ignore the faith’s teaching on respect for life, especially unborn human life.
What this has really allowed her and others to do, is also ignore what medicine, biology, embryology, medecine, science, natural reason and the whole array of human knowledge, experience and consensus can tell us about abortion.
If you watch the whole exchange (and I encourage you to watch it below) you can hear the other members of the press in the gallery laugh when Pelosi responds to McCormack’s question by saying “You’re probably enjoying that question a lot, I can see you savoring it.”
For Pelosi, McCormack asking her a question about the morality of killing unborn vs. born infants of the same age is laughable.
And apparently, it’s a joke the press is in on.
Well, I’m not laughing.
If Pelosi is basically a dunce when it comes to the Church’s social teaching, what other expertise can she call upon to accredit her efforts to legislate and argue against protections for the unborn?
This is not an arcane or theoretical question I’m posing (and the press should pose to her) — there is a bill set to be voted on in the House of Representatives next week which would create a federal ban on abortions after 20-weeks nationwide, because the evidence shows that unborn babies killed after 20 weeks experience pain (CatholicVote supports the ban).
Does Pelosi have even a basic understanding of the issues addressed by this bill?
Looking at the same transcript of her back-and-forth with McCormack, it would appear she does not:
PELOSI: This is not the issue. They are saying that there’s no abortion. It would make it a federal law that there would be no abortion in our country. You’re taking the extreme case. You’re taking the extreme case. And what I’m saying to you what happened in Philadelphia was reprehensible. And I do not think you.
TWS: [Inaudible]
PELOSI: I’m not going to have this conversation with you because you obviously have an agenda. You’re not interested in having an answer.
In fact, the bill would not create a federal law against all abortions — it would simply outlaw abortions after 20-weeks, much like the partial-birth abortion ban prevented that particularly heinous form of abortion.
If we lived in an age where the media was not totally in the tank for abortion and did not have a vested interest in shielding Pelosi from every awkward question and embarrassing situation, the story that would come out of this exchange is not only that Pelosi totally ignores the teaching of her own church, but that she opposes that teaching while simultaneously possessing zero knowledge or expertise beyond her own misguided opinions on the issue.
I care greatly about the need for Pelosi to be made aware of her ignorance and abuse of her Catholic faith in the public square.
But I also care greatly about the plight of the unborn and so, while I don’t expect the media to do our job of calling Pelosi out for her ignorance of Catholic teaching, I do call upon the media to do its job and ask Pelosi to her face the basic questions about key debates like abortions after 20-weeks that they should be asking everyone, Catholic or not.
Here is video of Pelosi’s exchange with McCormack: