The most unchallengeable opinion we have heard on the subject comes from Frank Stephens, a man who has Down Syndrome, who in his testimony to Congress eloquently defended his life, and who this week told an interviewer “I don’t want to make abortion illegal. I want to make abortion unthinkable.” We emphasize that Mr. Stephens has a condition which, if the laws introduced by the Democrats are enacted, would perhaps make a future Frank Stephens a candidate for an abortion.
However, a few hours later they definitely heard about the Governor’s 1984 medical school yearbook, which contains a page for each graduate, and on that of the future Governor, there is a picture of two students, one in blackface and one dressed as a Klansman. The Governor apologized for being in the picture, but after further reflection he asserted that he was not in that picture anyway and had no idea how it got on his page as he had never seen a copy of the yearbook. Incidentally, he did admit to appearing in blackface on a different occasion.
Well, the Governor’s remarks championing abortion/infanticide may not have been heard by any elected Democrats, but they all seemed to see that picture in the yearbook, because office holders, party officials, candidates for president and other people in leadership positions have demanded the Governor step down. We agree, and when one recalls that the Governor’s election campaign tarred his Republican opponent as a “racist” (even though there was no evidence for it), we can find it apt that he now has been ensnared in the same accusation.
There are many issues at play here. For one, the espousal of infanticide in 2019 apparently carries little political risk, but a yearbook photo from 1984 is enough to destroy a career. Is it fair to judge anyone by what they did in high school or college or medical school? Well, the mainstream media and the progressive left believe it is fair to judge Republicans that way, but they usually do not think it is right to apply the same standards to Democrats. The general public still has not read Hillary Rodham’s commencement address nor seen Barack Obama’s college transcripts, but we suspect they are being kept under wraps for very good reasons. Either the current case marks a shift in outlook or opinion or it is too egregious to sweep under the rug.
The Democrats have been pretty consistent lately in judging people’s words and actions not by the standards of their time but by the standards of today. That is why the party, which up until a few years ago held regular Jefferson-Jackson dinners in almost every state, abandoned the tradition when they discovered that both former Presidents had been slaveholders. Up to that point the two had been extolled as founders of the Democratic party. Whatever good those men may have done was erased because of their slaveholding past – a past which was not “discovered” after all but was well-known and well-recorded, but became a liability about 200 years after those men died.
We do not think that the present Governor of Virginia’s stature matches those of the two former presidents, but he did serve in the US Army, he was a successful pediatric neurosurgeon and served as Lieutenant Governor as well as Governor of Virginia. All that is forgotten now, or at least insignificant and unimportant. We share the shock about the Governor’s yearbook picture, and believe he should apologize and should resign. We also thought he should have resigned because of his abortion/infanticide remarks. In light of these revelations, every yearbook of every candidate for office in America is likely to be scrutinized – and probably should be. But let us remember that judging people harshly for some non-criminal act committed when they were in high school or college sets a standard that would disqualify many people, and which goes against our legal and religious tra