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Jess Wilson worries about fixing roads. But when it comes to defending the most vulnerable, she seems happy to take the easy detour.

I want to like the Victorian Liberals — honest, I do. But golly, do they make it difficult.

Jess Wilson was asked on News24 why she had so quickly matched Labor’s ghoulish promise of ‘free abortions if you vote for us’.

Ben Carroll’s promise was the sort of moral grotesquery we have come to expect from a socialist government that regards power not as a responsibility, but as an appetite to be fed.

But Wilson’s response was hardly reassuring.

Why had she matched Labor’s offer?

A Disappointing Explanation From the Liberal Leader

Here’s what she said:

“Can I acknowledge from the outset that there are a range of views on this issue, and deeply held and strongly held.”

Well, yes. We are discussing whether unborn babies should be killed in the womb. You would certainly hope people had some deeply held views about that.

But then came the explanation. And it was a doozy.

“Let me talk a little bit about why I made that decision and my views…”

Remember, she is explaining why she took all of five minutes to agree with Labor that taxpayers should provide free abortions.

Brace for impact…

“I wasn’t going to allow a deep government to run a scare campaign on women’s health care and to distract from the issues that are really importune in this election — keeping Victorians safe, fixing the roads, repairing the budget.”

She was not going to allow the small issue of whether or not babies could be more easily killed in the womb become a… ‘distraction’ from important issues?

Is she serious?

Are Unborn Babies Just an Election Distraction?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m as annoyed by a pothole as the next guy in a low-slung sports car.

But Jess. Really?

As for not wanting to let the issue of abortion distract from the issue of “keeping Victorians safe”… she’s going to make a mother’s womb more dangerous in order to make the CBD safer?

Is that really the compromise?

There is also a question here that seems to have escaped the Liberal leader entirely: might there be some connection between a society’s casual disregard for the most vulnerable human life and its growing indifference to human life elsewhere?

Perhaps not.

Perhaps these things are entirely unrelated.

Perhaps we can teach children that human life is precious while simultaneously teaching them that some human lives are negotiable.

But I would have thought the question was worth considering.

Politics First, Principles Later

Alas, in the end, there appears to be only one consideration for Jess Wilson:

“This was a desperate scare campaign from a desperate premier and I simply wasn’t going to allow it to become an election issue.”

Jess Wilson wasn’t going to let the small matter of unborn babies get in the way of winning an election.

Labor offers something morally grotesque, and rather than explain why it is wrong, the Liberals rush to offer their own version in the hope nobody notices the difference.

Politics first. Principles later. If there is time. And right now, Wilson doesn’t have time for principles — not when there’s a chance to become Premier.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.