Lopez: Taxi driver's take on Tim Walz, abortion and family policy

My taxicab driver declared the Democratic vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, a dud. "Is Minnesota even in play?" he protested. "This is about abortion, isn't it?" he asked a bit nervously. He was relieved when I agreed with him.

Billy, my driver, told me he really doesn't have a right to have an opinion on a women's right to choose because he's a man. But when I encouraged him to follow the science and stand up for the innocent, he was playing a different tune: "I'm adopted ... I wouldn't be here if my birth mother chose abortion. Abortion is evil. But we're not supposed to say that." He even showed me photos of both his birth and adopted parents.

That's not a typical New York City conversation, but you never know what you might encounter during an election year.

Vice President Kamala Harris doubled down on her abortion extremism in making the Minnesota governor her running mate in her campaign for president. In his state, Walz signed legislation declaring that "Every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual's own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive health care."

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made a comment about abortion making not only women, but men, freer. Speaking about Harris, he declared: "I'm so glad she has made freedom the theme of her campaign, and I think in so many ways that's what's at stake. And, yes, women's freedom is Exhibit A after Donald Trump demolished the right to choose. But, of course, men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion care."

To pretend that Buttigieg and Walz are doing women any favors in the name of freedom is a lie.

Anyone who has ever spent any time outside an abortion clinic knows that women are not exercising freedom when they enter those doors. They are often in misery and under the arm of a man who doesn't want to have to be responsible for his actions. I often think of my own time outside clinics watching men not even getting out of their cars to accompany their girlfriends inside.

On the other hand, of course, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has made comments disparaging childless women. That, too, shows an insensitivity to the realities of life. Infertility is such widely unacknowledged agony, especially for couples who suffer miscarriages — real deaths that are often treated as mere medical procedures.

There's a meeting place for both sides when it comes to family policy, and it involves admitting that having children is hard and expensive. Housing insecurity is often the reason a mother feels coerced into having an abortion. Instead of pretending abortion is freedom or making fun of single women, how about a substantive debate about what might actually help families flourish and make marriage and children plausible for more people?

I've been involved in good-faith efforts that nudge the right and the left when it comes to policies to help families — tax credits, for a start. Our politics is crazy enough that someone might just give such proposals a try. There are no such incentives in presidential-election cycles, but it should be insisted upon anyway.

Men and women both need to step up to the plate in defense of not only the unborn but of families. My taxi driver knew this — in no small part in gratitude for his life — and we all do, don't we?

klopez@nationalreview.com