I remember when Rush Limbaugh mocked the Democrat Party's grotesque exploitation of the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone's death in a 2002 plane crash.
Party operatives took to the stage at Wellstone's memorial service and turned a nonpartisan occasion, attended by Republican colleagues and the independent governor of the state, into a bitter, classless demand for votes.
The service was held a week before the 2002 election. Even Wellstone's best friend and campaign treasurer, Rick Kahn, couldn't help but make his speech about politics. With grieving family present, he repeatedly screeched, "win this election for Paul Wellstone!"
Voters responded in disgust by electing Republican Norm Coleman, giving the GOP control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.
This week, I saw Kamala Harris do the same thing by exploiting the tragedy of Amber Nicole Thurman in an effort to win votes.
The state-run media dutifully obeyed the Biden/Harris regime's position, adopting it as truth and working relentlessly to augment and enlarge the staggeringly false narrative. These were the top stories Google was still recommending Sunday night from a search about Thurman's death:
Despite the Democrat media collusion, independent journalists and commentators used social media to expose the truth that Thurman did not die because she lacked access to abortion care, but literally because of abortion.
Having been deceived about the safety of the extraordinarily dangerous chemical abortion regimen, Thurman succumbed to sepsis without receiving proper medical care that the laws of Georgia fully allowed her to access.
That's what makes Harris's willingness to stand on Thurman's grave, using her family's grief as a political appeal for money and votes, so incredibly heartless.
Harris is also using women like Hadley Duvall, who was impregnated by her stepfather, to create campaign ads that lie about women's inability to get an abortion after the overturning of Roe while ignoring the humanity of the unborn child.
Platitudes, even true ones like "two wrongs don't make a right," seem useless in the face of such unimaginable pain and grief. It seems wrong to clap back at someone who will forever bear scars from her childhood that no woman, no person, should ever have to experience. Of course, it also seems wrong to fundraise and campaign off her pain.
A better course would be to acknowledge her humanity, her need for justice, and to talk meaningfully about what that looks like when a baby is also involved. Not doing so causes us a blindness to realities that we need to consider.
Realities that another incredibly brave young woman who experienced the same horrific childhood trauma courageously pointed out in this heart-wrenching testimony:
Those of us motivated by a desire for justice must be honest that abortion is not only a deadly procedure designed to intentionally kill nascent human life, but is also one that maims (or worse) women physically, permanently damages them emotionally, and is used as a duplicitous tool by abusive men to hide their sins, shirk their responsibilities, and escape justice.
That's nothing any of us should support.
One of the most despicable aspects of political culture, be it right or left, is the tendency to forget our humanity and the humanity of others. The Left sees it from the Right when Republican politicians paint every illegal immigrant with the broad brush of rapist and murderer. The Right sees it from the Left when Democrat politicians paint the miraculous relationship between a mother and her unborn baby as one of host and parasite.
The way we engage with issues of life and death in politics should not be flippant. It should not use death as a fundraising opportunity. It should not be the "end justifies the means" rancorous pursuit of power.
True compassion is rooted in the truth, which itself is planted in the God who keeps all earthly thrones and kingdoms firmly positioned under His feet - the God who commands us to love Him first and each other second.
