Cruz Makes the Case That Trump is Still Pro-Choice. Trump Reacts.

By The Stream Published on February 16, 2016

Donald Trump told reporters Monday that Ted Cruz is lying about his record, and at one point homed in on the abortion issue. “He’s printed lies,” Trump said. “He said I’m pro-choice and I’m pro-life.”

But only last August Trump was asked about his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and he said she would make a “phenomenal” Supreme Court justice. As The Stream‘s Anika Smith reported then:

Trump was asked for his Supreme Court picks and said, “I have a sister who’s on the court of appeals, and she’s fantastic.”

Halperin asks, “Would she be a good Supreme Court justice?”

“Oh, I think she’d be phenomenal; she’d be one of the best,” Trump said.

He went on to say that would have to be ruled out “at least temporarily,” but did not explain why she would have to be ruled out or why he might rule her out only temporarily.

Speaking to the ABC News show This Week on Sunday, Trump said he had made the suggestion “kiddingly,” at a reporter’s prompting. But in his press conference, also on Sunday, he gushed about how widely respected a judge she was and said he didn’t know what his sister’s views were on various issues. “She may have views on certain things,” he said. “I haven’t asked her her views; I don’t want to ask her views; I don’t think it’s appropriate. … I don’t know what her views are, and I don’t think she’d want to tell me.”

All In for Partial-Birth Abortion?

Barry is best known for a 2000 decisionPlanned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, overturning the New Jersey legislature’s attempt to ban partial-birth abortion. She claimed to be making a purely legal argument based on the Supreme Court’s rulings, but the way she made the argument and the language she used implied a firm commitment to the preservation of unrestricted abortion. (Samuel Alito, now a conservative Supreme Court justice, concurred in the decision but said Barry’s decision “was never necessary and is now obsolete” since the Supreme Court had issued its Steinberg v. Carhart decision.)

In the decision, writing for the majority of the court, she dismissed the distinction between “born” and “partially born,” claiming that such an idea “is based on semantic machinations, irrational line-drawing and an obvious attempt to inflame public opinion instead of logic or medical evidence.” She continued:

Positing an “unborn” versus “partially born” distinction, the Legislature would have us accept, and the public believe, that during a “partial-birth abortion” the fetus is in the process of being “born” at the time of its demise. It is not. A woman seeking an abortion is plainly not seeking to give birth. … In what can only be described as a desperate attempt to circumvent over twenty-five years of abortion jurisprudence, the Legislature would draw a line based upon the location in the woman’s body where the fetus expires. Establishing the cervix as the demarcation line between abortion and infanticide is nonsensical on its face as well as inaccurate because that line may be crossed in any number of abortion procedures which the Legislature concedes are constitutionally protected.

So, Who’s Lying Here?

“Now it’s good to stand with your sister,” Cruz told reporters while campaigning in South Carolina, “but Donald’s sister was a Bill Clinton-appointed federal appellate judge who is a radical pro-abortion extremist.” He added: “Donald Trump, if he were president — he would appoint liberals to the Supreme Court. I know this for a fact. Why? Because Donald has been a liberal his entire adult life.”

Trump responded by calling Cruz a liar. “Certainly what he said about her is horrible. They made her sound just terrible.”

At RedState Leon H. Wolf defended Cruz’s warning about Trump in a column titled, “Trump: Sure I Said My Sister Should be on the Supreme Court, but I Have no Idea What She Believes.” After reviewing Trump’s comments Sunday and in August, Wolf concludes:

See, this is why Ted Cruz says things like “Donald Trump would appoint liberal Supreme Court justices.” It’s because he [Trump] apparently has no interest in examining a person’s actual record before deciding whether they would make a great Supreme Court justice, because to do so would be “inappropriate.”

Trump is “rattled,” Cruz told a campaign rally. “He was just going on and on about how I’m the most horrible person in the world because you know, I keep repeating things he’s said.” The “only explanation one could have is that his internal poll numbers for South Carolina must be plummeting.”

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