Spitzer's Logic

Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced governor of New York, resigned this week after a federal investigation revealed he repeatedly used a high-priced prostitution ring. Many people are asking how the former New York attorney general could be so stupid to brazenly flout the law. I confess I don't know. Perhaps sex addiction may have something to do with it. I suspect we will learn more details about this sordid case than anyone really needs.

Ironically, I see a sad link between Spitzer's public positions on issues of concern to pro-lifers and his acts with prostitutes. The link involves his evident contempt for women: his wife and daughters, certainly, but also his contempt for women caught in the sex trade, and his contempt for women generally as mothers.

Of course, Spitzer pleased many advocates for women by pushing for passage of a tough state law against sex trafficking. Studies show that 89 percent of prostitutes strongly want to leave this work, while two-thirds experience a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yet here is Spitzer happily and repeatedly abusing young women's bodies and souls for his own sordid pleasure. Hypocrisy concerning sexual matters is nothing new for a politician. Just ask David Vitter.

But while conservative politicians such as Vitter have been rightly lambasted in the press for hypocrisy, Spitzer's private actions are sadly the logical result of his public leadership.

Spitzer's contempt for women is also evident in his radical pro-abortion positions. Spitzer as attorney general founded a "reproductive rights" unit within his office and aggressively tried to shut down pregnancy support centers across the state.

His own private sexual misdeeds clearly divorce the sexual act from reproduction, and his public stances do the same. Gone is the dignity of women who nurture children in favor of women as the mere playthings of the rich and powerful-like Spitzer. If something so unfortunate as a pregnancy might ensue, not to worry: just get an abortion. Spitzer the AG and governor saw terminating a pregnancy as a fundamental right for New Yorkers.

Of course, many, if not most, who support abortion rights don't cheat on their families and cavort with high-priced call girls. But they are virtuous in spite of their public positions. Abortion is infidelity on so many levels: to women, to children, to self, and to God. We shouldn't be surprised that Spitzer's public life spilled over to his private life.