Motus Mentis

Abortion’s been in the public eye lately: with the Democratic Party red-shifting leftward, legislators are seizing the opportunity to push the limits — both legal and moral — of the un-personing of the unborn. New York State just celebrated, with standing ovations and a festive light-show, a ghoulish dismantling of its moral obligations to its residents in utero, while in Virginia a state politician named Kathy Tran found herself in a national spotlight for advancing similar legislation. The Virginia bill was defeated, unlike its counterpart in New York; both bills legalized abortion right up to the moment of delivery, and pointedly left open the question of what happens to an unwanted infant who somehow manages to get itself born alive after an attempted abortion.

Ms. Tran achieved “virality” in a video showing her acknowledging that her bill would, in principle, allow abortion even during labor. Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, got himself caught up in the maelstrom as well, when he said, during an interview, that what would happen to a baby who survived an abortion would be a matter of “discussion” as the infant waited nearby. (He’s also become, quite suddenly, the subject of a Two Minutes’ Hate for some old yearbook photos; one wonders just who dug those up and why, but I won’t say anything more about that for now.)

No, what I want to bring to your attention is something you might not have heard about: an example of everything that is execrable about our political system (and I use the term “our political system” very broadly indeed). It is the excuse given by one Dawn Adams (D-Richmond), the co-sponsor of Kathy Tran’s bill, just as soon as Ms. Tran, and the bill they had pushed forward together, became the objects of condemnatory national attention.

Did Ms. Adams say that her thoughts “had evolved” since she helped advance this bill? No. Did she do the honest thing, and come right out and say that her sponsorship of the bill was a political calculation that had backfired badly, and she’d be more careful next time? (Just kidding with that one.)

Nope. Here is the actual excuse she settled on: that she hadn’t read the bill attentively enough — the bill she herself co-sponsored — to understand what it said.

So: after finding herself in a public-relations pickle, this woman — this elected representative of the People, charged with the sacred trust and solemn duty of making the laws that her constituents shall be bound to under the power of an irresistible State; this duly sworn executor of the great social Contract that lifts us all, by our given (or assumed) consent, from the toils of savagery and barbarism — considered how she might exculpate herself, and settled on that?? We have come to a strange and sorry pass when a public official can expect to exonerate herself from controversy by confessing egregious malpractice.

It seems to me that we had, ages ago, severe public remedies and prescriptions for scoundrels, but no longer. We still have the scoundrels.