By Our Foreign correspondent
Washington : Pope Francis waded into the U.S. Presidential elections during press conference on the flight back to Rome on Sept 13, saying of the choice between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman ? I don’t know.
They are both against life. The one who throws away the migrants as well as the one who kills children” the pope said.
The Republican candidate for Presidential election Mr Donald Trump stands for mass deportation of migrants. The Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to try and restore abortion right nationwide if she was elected to the post of the covetous US President.
U S Presidential election scheduled to be held on November 05, has hogged the limelight of abortion and immigration.
According to official estimates, around 10 million people entered the US illegally during the Biden-Harris administration. Trump campaign alleged this number is 22 million and tries to pin the entire blame on Ms Harris. She has been promising a strong border policy besides blaming Mr Trump for blocking border management measures proposed by the Biden administration.
The abortion debate has been politically rewarding for the Democrats and costly for the Republicans in recent past. In the 2022 mid-term elections that followed the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that abortion was not a constitutionally guaranteed right, Democrats retained control of the Senate and performed above expectations in the House of Representatives. This was attributed largely to an increased support among women for the Democrats.
According to an American University poll last week,Ms Harris is increasing her lead over Mr trump among women voters, and 86 per cent of women disapprove of any government intervention in reproductive choices.
Mr Trump who had earlier claimed credit for the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion, is now trying to mellow down. Trump’s wife Melania is reportedly in support of protecting abortion in her memoir slated for release on October 08.
Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump would like to sharpen polarization on one, and diffuse the debate on the other. Both sides misrepresent each other in pursuit of a favorable framing of the contest. In the chaotic mess of issues that confuse Americans -from inflation to global wars to fracking and climate –these are two issues that both parties hope can help them build clarity in their favor.
At the same time, both (Democrats and Republicans) are trying to reposition themselves on the issue that put them on the defensive –Ms Harris wants to appear tougher than she has been on the issue of illegal immigration and Mr. trump wants to appear softer than he used to be on the question of abortion.
Pope Francis reportedly said that Catholics had to form their consciences when deciding for whom to vote. The U S Bishops, in adopting a new introductory statement to their quardrennial document on voting “forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” were less even-handed in their appraisal of the two major political parties.
Last year, they voted to state that abortion is “our pre-eminent priority in the 2024 election, repeating phrasing first used in the 2020 version of the statement. Previous iterations of the document had refrained from such explicit emphasis on one issue, because that level of specificity is precisely where conscience formation is required. It is not clear that this year’s federal elections will have any consequence on national abortion policy, given the evenly divided Congress, so making that issue a priority that strikes many observers as odd.
Of the total population of a tad over 33 crore, 24 per cent constituted Catholics. One has to wait and see what would be the result of the Pope’s reported statement “One must choose the lesser of two evils”. It is a great consolation that the pope did not tell who is the lesser evil candidate.
The attitude of the Catholics’ votes would be a deciding factor in the results of the US president’s election, though at present Ms. Harris is leading over her rival Trump.