What does Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico really think about abortion? At a CNN town hall this week in Texas, he confirmed his long-held views that abortion should be legal, that it’s not murder, and that “the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion.”
That’s what he said during an exchange with a Catholic voter who challenged him on the abortion issue. The voter, a woman named Jodi Hunt who also happens to be a Catholic theologian, responded by saying, “I just want to add that the Bible is not silent on abortion. There is the 10 Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill.’ And as Catholics, we take great insult, I guess sometimes, when it’s described that way.”
That was the viral moment. But before that exchange Talarico said something most voters had not heard before: that he wants to see fewer abortions and unwanted pregnancies.
The obvious question is, why? If, in Talarico’s view, abortion isn’t murder, and the Bible says nothing about it, then why should he care about how many abortions there are in Texas? Why would fewer abortions be better, if abortion is just “health care,” as he claims? In the past, Talarico said he thinks Roe v. Wade should be codified in federal law, meaning abortion would be legal up until the moment of birth. Such a law would surely mean more abortions nationwide. So what is he saying?
Hunt had asked him why Catholics should support Democrats, given the party’s support for abortion, since Catholics believe abortion is the murder of an innocent human being. How can Catholics trust Democrats to safeguard the public good, she asks, when they refuse to protect the most vulnerable among us?
It was a good question, and well-put. Talarico responded with a bit of legerdemain that strongly called to mind Obama in the 2010s, back when the Democratic establishment behaved as if all the major cultural and moral debates in American public life had been settled in Democrats’ favor, and all that remained was to decide which specific policy solutions to implement.
In his reply to Hunt, Talarico smiled and said that although they might come to different moral and ethical conclusions about whether abortion should be legal, or about what the scriptures say about abortion, there’s some common ground they share when it comes to being pro-life.
The common ground, Talarico says, is “reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and the number of abortions.” He goes on to say that if we treat abortion as a public health problem and not a culture war problem, “then we can actually make progress together.”
Talarico insisted that abortion isn’t a philosophical or theological debate, but a public policy problem. “I want to see fewer unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. I want to see fewer abortions,” he says. “And so you and I actually have the same goal.”
He went on to say that things like sex education, contraception, and “health care” all reduce the number of abortions, and that he’d be “willing to work with” voters like Hunt on those things. (Never mind that most Catholics like Hunt are also going to be opposed to sex education and contraception on similar moral grounds.)
But in fact Hunt and Talarico do not ultimately share the same goal because they have totally different reasons for wanting fewer abortions. Hunt believes, along with 2,000 years of Christian tradition and teaching, that abortion takes an innocent human life and is therefore a violation of the sixth commandment against murder. Her reason for wanting fewer abortions is clear: she believes unborn children are human beings who have the same right to live as anyone else, and killing them is a crime.
Talarico’s reason for wanting fewer abortions is totally unclear. He holds the bizarre and blasphemous belief, which he articulated in an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast last year, that abortion is sanctioned by the Bible because Mary gave her consent to the Incarnation. He does not think it’s murder, and he does not think the unborn have any rights whatsoever. So why should it matter how many women choose to get an abortion?
The most obvious answer is that Talarico is being dishonest. He doesn’t really want to see fewer abortions but he needs to appear as reasonable and sympathetic as possible to swing voters because he has said so many radical and frankly insane and off-putting things — about abortion and scripture, about God being nonbinary, about trans kids, about race, and so on.
His comments to Hunt on the CNN town hall, in other words, were carefully calibrated to table the real and intractable disagreement he has with pro-life voters. Public policy disputes are almost always first and foremost disputes over philosophical and theological commitments — and none more so than abortion, which concerns matters of life and death.
That Talarico wants to pretend otherwise is an indication he’s not being honest about what he really thinks, and despite his winsome persona, like Obama he doesn’t really think there’s anything left to debate. The only question is which Democratic policy to adopt.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.