PrintAbortion and student debt forgiveness in Georgia
In the Oct. 14 debate between pastor Raphael Warnock and college/NFL running back great Herschel Walker for Warnock's current seat in the U.S. Senate, the subject turned to abortion. In opposition to bans on abortion, Warnock said [at 15:20] that "a patient's room is too narrow and small and cramped for a woman, her doctor, and the United States government."
In his response, Walker said, "Did he [Warnock] not mention that there's a baby in that room as well?"
It was a simple point. It did not settle the issue, but it did make clear that the issue is not so simple as to be decided by a pregnant woman and her doctor. Rather, there is a third party, whose existence the pastor did not even acknowledge.
(With more time for reflection, we might also ask whether there was space enough for a pastor in the room. A video clip that appeared later in the debate did show Warnock mentioning that possibility, but leaving such inclusion of a pastor to the woman's discretion. But if "pastor" is effectively a reference to God, is such inclusion really "discretionary"? Some might argue that it is, but one would not expect such argument to be made by a pastor himself.)
In his response, Walker went on to say, "And also, did [Warnock] not mention that he's asking the taxpayer to pay for it? So he's bringing the government back into the room."
Warnock acted as though he was going to rebut, but when he was given the floor again, he ignored Walker's points and changed the subject, talking about "maternal mortality" and how he had worked with Sen. Rubio to pass legislation to address it. Then, in a grand manner, he concluded, "Do you want a senator who wants to control your life, or a senator who wants to save your life?"
The problem here is that, in the first part, Warnock was talking about the abortion issue, and in the second part, he was speaking about the maternity mortality legislation. He never addressed Walker's mention of the taxpayer in the room, whose decision about financing abortion Warnock is apparently entirely comfortable controlling.
Can one say that the reverse is true about Walker — that he is comfortable controlling the pregnant woman? Not exactly. For if you accept the premise that an unborn child is legally a person, then Walker's position is not simply about control, but about the basis for such control: the protection of the unborn child.
The real dispute is about whether an unborn child is legally a person or not. But if we accept Walker's premise, then he is logically consistent. Pastor Warnock is not.
Following abortion, the moderators ran a clip of a college student asking if the candidates would support additional "forgiveness" — cancelation of required repayment — of student loans. To this, Warnock pointed out that, but for student loans and grants, he himself would not have been able to attend college. He went on to claim responsibility for persuading Pres. Biden to raise the present relief from $10,000 to $20,000. (Warnock closed on a different subject, saying he was working on bringing college costs down.)
Before we turn to Walker, this writer would point out that usually, when people oppose such cancelation, the justification is that such a measure would be unfair to those students who repaid their debt.
In his response, Walker in fact opposed it, but his justification was not the usual one. After an initial comment about Warnock's preceding response, Walker said:
As I was traveling around the state of Georgia, some people that wanted to go to college, they couldn't, so they end up, working on their father's farms — some military, wanted to go to college, but they didn't. So they went to the military, may have lost an arm. So this is not right! Georgia people say it's not right, and they say it's unfair.
This is the real, the foremost argument against cancelation of student debt, but it is one that, in print or through broadcast, is rarely made. Apparently, it's made only by people Walker talks to, who perhaps include a great number who did not go to college. Apparently, to those who dominate print and broadcasting, if you don't go to college, you don't matter — at least not as much as those who do. Apparently, this is the way Warnock thinks. But not Walker.
