Mr. Trump should have laughed at Chris Matthews' question: IF abortion became illegal should a woman be punished for having an abortion (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/03/30/trump_some_form_of_punishment_for_women_if_abortion_becomes_illegal.html) because if he said, "Yes," as he did, then he seemed anti-woman and if he said, "No," which he didn't he would be advocating breaking the law. Hmm.
It's an indictment of the schizophrenia of Democratic reasoning of the past almost decade more than Mr. Trump. After all, our moralizer in chief has most notably established legalized punishment for all sorts of behaviors, but has smoothly coaxed the American people of his "right" thinking…Yep, Obamacare.
Failure to legally comply with government pronouncements takes different forms--criminal penalties or civil penalties, but for regular people, we see lots of things as "punishment." So, perhaps Mr. Trump was referring to an abortion tax when he referred to punishment? Surely, no biased Democrat moralizing can seriously argue against that, can they, unless they're indulging in the unreasoned reasoning that typifies today's Democrats?
Take Obamacare, you'd have to be pretty far gone not to notice the "punishments" based on "moral" judgments that the health insurance and government payers introduced into our healthcare system. Sure, they try to neutralize it as "cost savings," or "prevention," in terms of the old insurance idea of do-what-you-want-but-we-won't-pay-for-it. But make no mistake, the use of the carrot-and-stick incentives are just that--reward and punishment.
So maybe those who have abortions should be subject to higher costs or a tax such as THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE? After all, Obamacare is very comfortable with that kind of compulsion--IF you don't buy health insurance, THEN you're going to pay a tax--Nobody's dumb enough not to see that tax as a punishment. You MUST PURCHASE the consumer product of health insurance or face a tax penalty unless you qualify for an exemption under Obamacare.
The individual mandate sounds very Trumpish--if something's is mandated by law (buy this consumer financial product) and you don't, there is some sort of "punishment." You're not necessarily subject to criminal penalties (which Mr. Trump did not recommend), but make no mistake you are punished, just like Obamacare punishes those who don't go out and buy a marketplace financial product--health insurance whether it meets their needs or not, whether they're being forced to purchase something that creates an enormous financial burden or not, whether you want a policy that charges you for being old and also includes charges to cover pregnant women, the obese, the drug addicted, those with other ailments besides being old or not.
Like Obama himself, Obamacare is fraught with illogical moralizing. Charging "CERTAIN" people more in premiums because according to "metrics" they could cost more in coverage for healthcare costs is presented as neutral, but is NOT neutral in Obamacare, because ONLY TWO categories of potentially more expensive individuals are held out for higher charges when other equally costly groups are not--in other words, those two groups are PUNISHED.
Under Obamacare you pay more in premiums if you're a smoker or if you're older, two seemingly logical reasons for charging people higher premiums UNLESS you notice that other high risk categories--people who smoke non-tobacco products like, crack for instance, cannot be charged more. (It should be noted that younger people are indirectly PUNISHED as well because their premiums are a ratio dependent on the premiums charged to older Americans which are already higher.)
Yet, pregnant women (sorry, they do cost more), people who are obese, or who have a history of costing more in the form of pre-existing conditions, alcoholics, prescription drug addicts, they're exempted from higher premiums. Why? Because Obamacare and payers are "moralizing," punishing the moral "miscreants" who dare to age or smoke tobacco products.
Obamacare also rewards those who submit to getting checked out--Get that preventive care which if heaven forbid turns something up for which you have to be treated, well then you're paying more in copayment, coinsurance, and deductible even if you are a good citizen and use participating providers. Free checkups, but if you're not a "good" perfectly healthy person, under Obamacare you pay MORE for care--a Punishment.
And if you're really sick, then you get end-of-life counseling and its equivalents advising against you spending the money on something that might not work. We PAY doctors now to give you that advice.
What about rewarding females for getting sterilized and bypassing the abortion issue all together? Under Obamacare reasoning, there is NO REASON to cover abortion (except in the isolated exemptions most agree on, rape, incest) because Obamacare PAYS FOR FREE PREVENTION, sterilization for women. Sensible women who note that male STERILIZATION is not a "freebie" under Obamacare would say, "Why should we punished by incentivizing FEMALES to be sterilized and not men by making it cheaper for us to have a more complicated and expensive procedure than it would be for our male counterparts?" But instead, free sterilization is heralded as pro-woman PREVENTION.
Why does Obamacare PUNISH men who are victims of domestic violence and not women? Women get free domestic violence counseling, not men. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, " 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime," http://www.ncadv.org/learn/statistics. This is PUNISHMENT OF MEN FOR BEING MALE.
Then naturally there's our President's moralizing over illegals that PUNISHES Americans guilty of misdemeanors by making them carry those records with them for a lifetime while REWARDING illegals who by their very illegal status have already committed a misdemeanor and in conjunction with that original lawbreaking have also failed to pay taxes, often use false IDs, often drive without a valid driver's license yet their slate is wiped clean?
When it comes to irrational moralizing, Obama is indeed a leader. So, you don't LIKE the idea of women facing a consequence if they obtain an ILLEGAL abortion (which is the question asked by Chris Matthews), well, maybe it's time to examine the Democratic moralizing and give everyone CHOICE instead of just focusing on that--Start with forcing us to purchase a financial product that is often inadequate to do what we need it to do or else face a penalty, excuse me, a PUNISHMENT.
