Politics: Abortion and the Presidential Front-Runners.

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(ThyBlackMan.com) The recent Wisconsin primary was a serious setback for the front-runners of both parties. Donald Trump’s momentum toward the 1,237 delegates needed for the Republican nomination was slowed by Ted Cruz’s victory, and Hillary Clinton lost yet again to Bernie Sanders, who’s won seven of the last eight contests.

Trump’s loss is particularly striking because Wisconsin includes many of the white working-class voters who have flocked to him in earlier contests. But his inability to speak coherently or authoritatively on issues outside of his supposed areas of expertise—the economy and the Great Wall of Trump—may finally be catching up to him.

Donald Trump’s infamous statements about abortion last week–when he told Chris Mathews that women who had abortions should be punished–are the most glaring examples of his shallow understanding of policy. To say that this is going rogue from the Pro-Life position would be an understatement, so his campaign team quickly clarified that the candidate believes doctors who perform abortion-2016abortions should be punished. But by the end of the week, Donald Trump was saying that “the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way”—an effectively pro-choice position.

Not even Donald Trump seems to know what he thinks about abortion, so it’s no wonder that evangelical Christians seem to have grown disillusioned with his candidacy. CNN’s exit polling from Wisconsin shows that that Ted Cruz won 55% of this important demographic and Trump just 34%. That’s a marked change since February’s South Carolina primary, when Trump won 33% of voters identifying as evangelical or born-again to Cruz’s 27%.

Meanwhile, in the days before losing her own Wisconsin primary battle, Hillary Clinton also caused controversy with remarks about abortion. When Chuck Todd asked whether or when “an unborn child [has] constitutional rights,” Clinton explained that “under our laws currently, that is not something that exists. The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”

Give Hillary Clinton credit for being right about this much: current law does not acknowledge the rights of the unborn, which is why Trump’s claim that he wouldn’t change the laws should worry any of his remaining pro-life supporters. But Clinton unwittingly expressed a pro-life premise: abortion terminates an “unborn person.” Not a fetus. Not a clump of cells. An unborn person.

The same pro-choice groups that were up-in-arms over Trump’s comments earlier in the week were suddenly attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee. A Planned Parenthood executive in Illinois criticized the candidate for “further stigmatiz[ing] abortion.”

Written By Ken Blackwell

Official website; http://twitter.com/kenblackwell