One of the reasons the anti-abortion position has trouble making the inroads on public opinion and policy that it should on its merits is because of supposed pro-life advocates like GOP State Rep. Richard Holtorf. In a TV interview on a local TV station (he is running for Congress—just what we need, another dim bulb hypocrite in the Capitol) Holtorf was forced to justify his indefensible double standard on abortion. Naturally, he couldn’t do it.
In January, the 59-year-old defended footing the bill for his girlfriend’s abortion, which seemed to be inconsistent with a failed 2020 measure he supported that would have banned the procedure in the Colorado after 22 weeks. His girl friend was more than 22 weeks pregnant. “I respected her rights and actually gave her money to help her through her important, critical time,” Holtorf said, that time being 1986.
9News anchor Kyle Clark asked him the obvious question: “If abortion was the best choice for your girlfriend, why try to deny that choice to other women?” Holtorf”s response can be fairly summarized as “huminahuminahumina,” Ralph Kramden’s immortal retort on “The Honeymooners” when trapped into having to explain one of his habitual blunders.
First, Holtorf said that he’s “a pro-life Catholic” who believes that “everyone should choose life,” which ducked the question. Law decree what one must do, not “should.”Then he tried to deflect further, causing Clark to ask again, “What I’m asking you about is, the fact that you said that you respected your girlfriend’s right to an abortion and then gave her money to help her through an important time.”
‘Exactly what I did,” Holtorf replies. Agreeing with someone who is really eviscerating your argument and characters is a cognitive dissonance ploy. “But yet you’ve tried to deny that to other women, and I’m asking why is an abortion good for your girlfriend but bad for other women,” Clark continued. “That’s my question. Simple, simple question.”
Huminahumina. Holtorf replied that in his speech, “the major theme of that presentation, if you listen to it, and I want you to listen to it again, is ‘choose life’…There are times when that choice can’t be made or it’s complicated particularly for the woman, okay?”‘
No, it’s not OK. “It’s complicated” is a dodge and a rationalization (46. The Abuser’s License: “It’s Complicated”) Presumably every decision regarding an unwanted pregnancy can be called “complicated,” unless one simplifies it by concluding, “It’s wrong to kill another human being at any stage in their life unless it is necessary to save another human being’s life. Other than that, abortion isn’t an ethical option.”
Then the cornered hypocrite tries the “you would have done the same thing!” tactic. ‘What were you doing when you were 20 years old?” he asks Clark. That didn’t work, so he went off into irrelevancies.
“I found out that she was pregnant the week I deployed to military training in the summer of, uh I think it was 1986, and guess what you do when you have military orders – you deploy. Okay? I went to Fort Washington, spent a month and a half there, then I went to California, and spent another month, and then I came back from my military training to Fort Collins Colorado, where I was attending as a student. Guess what my girlfriend told me she did which I asked her not to do. . I said, Kyle, we’ll figure this out when I get home… She had an abortion. Was that her choice? Yes. Did she have that right? Yes. Was it my my choice, Kyle? No.”
Oh. What? Let me get this straight: an abortion is OK if your boyfriend is in military training? Clark, correctly ignoring this blather, asked again, “Why do you seek to deny the choice that you said was best for your girlfriend’s life? Why do you seek to deny it to other women?”
Holtorf, who by now had fully exposed himself as a dimwit lacking integrity or intellect, responded that as “a pro-life person,” he thinks “you should try to choose life every time…”
Yoda would like a word, which is especially germane when human life is involved:
“But there are exceptions,” he says, still avoiding the question. “And there are times when you need abortion. Abortion is a medical procedure.”
“Is one of the exceptions when Richard Holtorf’s the father?” Clark asks, snapping the trap shut. Bravo!
“It’s not about me. Don’t personalize it and make it about me,” Holtorf responds, lying. Of course “it’s” about him. The issue is his double standard. The issue is his hypocrisy. The issue is that the policy he advocates is contrary to what he enabled and endorsed when the abortion question arose and his own interests were involved. Clark reminded Holtorf that he made the issue about him when he discussed his girlfriend’s abortion on the floor of the Colorado House. “That doesn’t matter,” Holtorf said, making no sense at all. “That’s a story. That’s not that important. What’s more important is the policy.”
Elected officials, candidates and public figures should just shut up about abortion if they haven’t given it serious thought, examined the ethical conflicts involved, and prepared for exactly the kind of questions Kyle Clark asked. Fool like Holtorf just pollute the civic discourse and enable other fools.
Here is what he should have said:
“My girl friend was wrong to have an abortion. She had the legal right then, and I couldn’t stop her. I paid for the abortion because it was my responsibility. If the law had been different, she would have had the baby, put it up for adoption, and that baby would be 38 years old now, maybe with children of his own. A life would have been saved, maybe many lives.”
“If my girlfriend’s life was legitimately in peril, that would have been a justification for the abortion. It wasn’t. She made a legal choice, but the wrong one, and one which our state should not permit. I am advocating exactly the same restrictions on abortion for women in Colorado that would have saved the life of the human being my girlfriend and I created all those tears ago. And I wish that had been the law then.”
But Richard Holtorf is a shallow, ethically-handicapped dolt who is unqualified for public office, so he didn’t say that.
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Pointer: Old Bill
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t fault him for paying for the abortion after his girlfriend had it. I don’t fault him for advocating for the abortion law he did. I wouldn’t fault him if he had approved of abortions as a 21 year old but changed his mind in the ensuing 34 years.
But I do fault him for not realizing that this would be a hot question if he is running for Congress, and formulating a measured and logical response to it that makes sense. If he cannot do that, then how can he be expected to function adequately in Congress, let alone be a good or better legislator.
If he wants to be in a position of making policy, taking stands, making political statements, making political speeches — well, dang it, he needs to do better than he showed in this interview.
As a Republican, I want to win — and one of the ways we do that is to field really good candidates who can make sense to independent voters. We should have finally learned that lesson in 2022. Reading Kim Strassel’s latest WSJ column about who Trump is endorsing this cycle actually makes me more hopeful that he has taken that lesson to heart. We’ll see.
But I do fault him for not realizing that this would be a hot question if he is running for Congress, and formulating a measured and logical response to it that makes sense. If he cannot do that, then how can he be expected to function adequately in Congress, let alone be a good or better legislator.
Exactly. He revealed that he hadn’t thought carefully or clearly about a serious issue that he claimed to care about.
In general, Republicans are having a hard time dealing with the abortion question right now.
The problem they are having is: What do you do when you’ve won? They scored a big win with the Dobbs decision, but too many are acting as though nothing has changed. It was easy to advocate for extreme positions when you knew that Roe would negate those from becoming law.
As Michael has said, in a different context, the rules have changed. Now if the GOP advances a law for a total abortion ban in a state, if it passes it is likely to actually become law. Regardless of one’s individual position as a lawmaker as to whether, when, and how an abortion should be legal, it has now been returned to the realm of actual political discourse.
It is probably a lot easier to simply oppose something than to suggest a reasonable compromise. That’s one reason it was easier for Republicans, pre Dobbs, to simply oppose abortion, and why it is easier for Democrats, post Dobbs, to simply oppose abortion bans.
Neither stance is very nuanced, and the other side needs to craft a measured proposal that will both appeal to and reassure voters. The same voters who stubbornly decline to endorse either extreme but can be swayed by negative campaigning.
And, now that I think on it, these same voters are the ones saying they really didn’t want either Trump nor Biden.
Both parties have been ignoring them. In regards to abortion, that has cost the Republicans in recent elections. Currently it appears that it may cost the Democrats in the presidential race.
Stay tuned.