Source: The Washington Post
Using just nine words from the Bible, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine condemned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments that he wanted to “punish” women who get abortions, his reference to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and Trump’s past statement that Sen. John McCain is not a war hero.
CBS News’s Elaine Quijano, who moderated the debate, asked Kaine and Mike Pence, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, to describe a time when they struggled to balance their personal faith with public policy.
Although Pence did not directly answer the question, he brought up his opposition to abortion by paraphrasing the biblical verse Jeremiah 1:5, “before you were formed in the womb, I knew you.” Earlier this year, Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, signed a law that banned abortions based on gender or disability.
Pence targeted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, by raising the issues of partial-birth abortion and an amendment barring most taxpayer funds for abortion. The decades-old Hyde Amendment had previously received support from some Democrats, including Kaine, but this year’s Democratic Party platform vowed to repeal the amendment.
Kaine said the abortion issue is a decision “we trust American women to do.”
“We don’t think women should be punished, as Donald Trump said they should, for the decision to have an abortion,” he said, citing comments Trump made in March.
Pence said he and Trump would not support legislation that would punish women.
“Then why did Donald Trump say that?” Kaine asked.
“He’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton,” Pence said.
“I’ve got a great line from the Gospel of Matthew,” Kaine said.
“From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks,” he said, a reference to Matthew 15:18 that also appears in Matthew 12:34 and other gospels and is a phrase that Kaine has used on the campaign trail. “When Donald Trump says that women should be punished, or Mexicans are criminals, or John McCain’s not a hero, he is showing you who he is.”
Categories: America, Bible, The Muslim Times