If Black lives matter, vote for Trump

The presidential debate was an unmitigated disaster. As unlikable as the personalities on stage were, I can’t condemn them in any meaningful way because they are reflective of the state of discourse among average citizens. We don’t talk to each other anymore, nor directly engage with the substance of what our opponents are saying. We hide behind our rage and pretend that’s taking the moral high road. 

With no real conversation at the debate, there was no winner. I doubt anyone changed their mind, though there were issues brought up sufficient to change minds. To improve the state of national discourse, we can have our own quality civil dialogue here, and pick up where the two debaters really dropped the ball. We can take a hard look at some of the issues brought up, and judge the merits of arguments amongst ourselves, not amongst pundits with canned soundbites. I invite my reader to wrestle with my argument as to why I think we should vote for Donald Trump.

The debate was bookended with the subject of the Supreme Court. The replacement for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg ought to have been given the most attention because it’s the most important part of a president’s legacy. A conservative judge replacing a liberal judge can significantly tip the scales on a number of divisive cases and make decisions that will have a direct effect on society. To this point, I think Joe Biden was right when he said what is at stake with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, is Roe v. Wade. So let’s examine Roe’s relevance to what I take to be one of the most pressing issues of our time: racial justice. 

Like many of my schoolmates, I believe Black lives matter. They matter when they’re buying Skittles, jogging or on the ground with the police on their necks. Their deaths shock our conscience because their killing has been met with impunity and disregard for their humanity. We need to stop dehumanizing our Black sisters and brothers. This call to actions leads us to an important question: When do humans come into existence? 

The opening pages of an embryology textbook, such as Moore’s “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology,” will tell you that a human comes into existence at conception. A 2018 study from the University of Chicago shows 95% of biologists agree that human life begins at conception. If your life starts at conception, and Black lives matter at every moment of their existence, then Black lives matter begins at conception. 

The abortion industry targets Black communities, as evidenced in the documentary “Maafa 21: Black Genocide in the 21st Century.” It provides an  honest look into the history of the nation’s largest abortion mill, Planned Parenthood, and the eugenicist beliefs of its founder Margaret Sanger, will suggest that putting abortion mills in communities of color doesn’t seem to be an accident. The abortion industry is at the apex of systemic racism. 

In case you’re optimistic that the eugenicist’s belief that some groups of people are genetically superior to other groups of people is quietly dying out with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, to whom Sanger would give talks to, I only need to remind you of the recent reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement forcing hysterectomies on Hispanic women, women who look like my tías and primas. Nor are those reports an outlier. “No Más Bebés” documents how Mexican-American women were deceptively sterilized here in Los Angeles county as late as 1974. Eugenics and its racist practices is still propagated, we’ve just euphemized it as “family planning.” 

But abortion isn’t just systemically racist, it intentionally kills an innocent human being. Even pro-choice books like Nobis and Grob’s “Thinking Critically About Abortion: Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should Be Legal” admit that abortion is indeed a killing.

 If we believe that intentionally killing an innocent human being is wrong, as I know my schoolmates who care about social justice do, and we acknowledge that abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being, then abortion is wrong. I can already hear some saying there is a difference between a human being and a person, and that the unborn are human but aren’t persons because they don’t exercise their ability to be conscious. 

Hasn’t this country, from its founding, dehumanized Black people when we didn’t consider them persons? This country has called non-whites brutes and savages because of their perceived inability to have their conscious function like that of white people, and we now know that they were egregiously wrong and lead to traumatic evils which we should never repeat. Let’s affirm the dignity of Black lives, not because of any function like consciousness, but affirm Black lives simply for being human. 

Amy Barrett, Trump’s Supreme Court of the United States nominee, is threatening to overturn Roe, whereas the Biden-Harris ticket is in the pocket of the abortion lobby. Look at Harris’ prosecution as California’s Attorney General of the Center for Medical Progress when they released recordings of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts, many charges of which have been thrown out by the courts. This is the same abortion lobby which endangers Black lives. The overturning of Roe will be a monumental first step in ensuring that we protect Black lives. With millions of Black lives at stake, we should vote for Trump.