✣ Row erupts over Trump's abortion remarks
What happened? Donald Trump faced a backlash for saying during an interview with the broadcaster MSNBC that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have had abortions. The Republican front-runner issued a statement hours later clarifying that he meant to say doctors performing the abortion would be punished instead – and that he was speaking hypothetically, on the assumption that abortion had been made illegal. His comments provoked uproar. What the media are saying The Economist observed: “With his poorly thought-out comments on abortion Trump managed a rare feat: he united both sides of the polarised debate.” Trump angered pro-life supporters by seeking to punish those having abortions rather than those performing them. Pro-lifers also feared Trump was “hurting their cause with his poor understanding of a complex ethical issue”. Ralph Hallow of The Washington Post reported that Trump’s statements led the National Right to Life Committee to endorse Ted Cruz for the Republican candidacy nomination. Pro-life groups are expected to “spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in independent expenditures for direct mail, phone banking, radio ads and email” promoting Mr Cruz in the 18 states that have not yet voted. What Catholics are saying “Trump’s very new to being pro-life and he seems uncurious about all of it,” said blogger Matthew Archbold of the National Catholic Register. Archbold suggested that Trump, admired for his “shoot from the hip” answers, managed to “shoot from the hip into his own foot. And the pro-life movement was injured in the melée as well.” A spokesman for the US bishops’ conference was forced to clarify that punishing women who had abortions had never been the Church’s policy.Trump’s remarks will add weight to the case made by Catholic academics George Weigel and Robert George, who warned in an article in the National Review: “Mr Trump’s record and his campaign show us no promise of greatness; they promise only the further degradation of our politics and our culture.”
