Liberal Doubletalk and the Situational Logic of the Left

When does life begin?

Can only women have children?

Recent answers from liberals to both of these hotly debated questions might surprise you.

In a stunning admission, New York Times correspondent Jonathan Weisman acknowledged, perhaps inadvertently, what science and common sense have long affirmed – that life begins at conception.

The startling comments from one of the nation’s historically liberal newspapers came in an article detailing the Democrat party’s push to pass an unprecedented $3.5 million budget designed to dramatically expand nearly every area of social welfare.

Mr. Weisman opens his report by stating:

“When congressional committees meet this week to begin formally drafting Democrats’ ambitious social policy plan, they will be undertaking the most significant expansion of the nation’s safety net since the war on poverty in the 1960s, devising legislation that would touch virtually every American’s life, from conception to aged infirmity.”

Later in the piece, Weisman notes:

“To grasp the intended measure’s scope, consider a life, from conception to death.”

Why the sudden shift? Before I offer my perspective, let’s turn to the matter of women and childbirth.

At the risk of stating the obvious, you and I both know that only females are biologically capable of conceiving and birthing children. It’s a fact. Until recently, nobody questioned such a fundamental statement.

Enter “woke” politics – which suggests gender is fluid and an artificial construct. According to this perspective, nobody is born female or male but instead “assigned” a gender at birth. It’s not true, of course, but that hasn’t stopped an entire movement from suggesting otherwise. Earlier this year, the Biden administration replaced the term “mothers” with “birthing people.”

Yet, White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki’s answer to EWTN reporter Owen Jensen would seem to suggest otherwise.

During a press gathering last week, Mr. Jensen asked why President Biden supported abortion when the Catholic Church teaches it’s morally wrong.

Ms. Psaki responded:

“I know you’ve never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant, but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing.”

Yet by the White House’s previously argued logic, how do they know Mr. Jensen has never been pregnant, since it’s apparently close-minded to believe only women are capable of bearing children?

Life beginning at conception and women’s exclusive ability to conceive and bear children are factual positions – but only convenient ones to the radical left when those positions help further specific agendas.

Since radical politicians are eager to expand government’s control at every stage of life, it’s helpful to them to expand the very definition of life itself.

At least until the reverse is true, as in the case of abortion.

If rebuking a male reporter for daring to ask a question about abortion helps keep abortion legal, then never mind previously argued logic affirming the so-called fluidity of gender.

It was early nineteenth century Scottish author Sir Walter Scott who once poetically observed, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

As believers, we can rest confidently in the clarity and clear-minded logic of God’s Word. It was the apostle Paul who warned earlier believers to beware of the “empty deceit” in the world (Col. 2:8).

More than two-thousand years later, that same warning applies to those of us in twenty-first century America.