Reader, forgive me.  I have erred.  Back in 2015, I was...a Carly Fiorina–supporter!  There, it's out.  Hope I never have to say it again.

I had two reasons.  One was foolish: I thought it would be clever to run a woman against the expected Democrat candidate, arguably a woman herself.  Mea culpa.  I should have known better.

The second was principled: Fiorina responded to undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress with admirable fury at Planned Parenthood.  She even earned rebukes from Planned Parenthood itself — and if Planned Parenthood is against candidates, I am for them.  Carly seemed the most determined right-to-lifer in the race.  This was always a non-negotiable issue for me.

I should have remembered that she worked for the McCain campaign and, in that capacity, undermined Sarah Palin.  I should have considered that, in her 2010 Senate campaign, she said she was "personally" opposed to abortion.  I should have seen the RINO signs.  But I didn't want to see the truth.  Mea culpa again.

I was so far gone that I actually resented Donald Trump's throwaway comment about her face.

Carly's candidacy didn't make it into 2016.  Briefly, she was Ted Cruz's vice presidential pick.  But Ted Cruz's candidacy didn't survive, either.

All this was because of Trump — Trump the unthinkable, Trump without limits, Trump who rendered all observers aghast, Trump who trod conventions underfoot, Trump who confronted the mainstream media instead of courting them, Trump who sneered at political pros like Rick Wilson, Trump who swatted aside the Bush dynasty with a twitch of his left hand.  Could I really vote for the Godzilla from Queens?  Could I really back the brute who had slighted Carly's face?

In the end, I could.  I held my nose a little bit for Trump on Election Day — but not as hard as I had done for John McCain.  I voted Trump because of something called Hillary.  Moreover, during the debates with Hillary, I'd seen something of the Trump that was to be.  I sensed that this was a guy who, unlike most Republican officeholders, would fight and keep fighting.

I haven't thought of Carly's face since that glorious night in 2016, when media expectations were kicked out the door.  But now Carly's gone and spoiled my fond memories of her by endorsing what's left of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Please consider that I supported Fiorina back in 2015 because she was the most forceful right-to-lifer.  Now consider what she's saying by endorsing Biden.

Biden has maintained in the past, with ordinary pre-dementia idiocy, that he accepted as a matter of faith the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion but declined to impose it on others.  Blah, blah, blah, Joe.  The Catholic teaching on abortion is presented not as a matter of faith, but as a rational appeal to the human conscience.  It is given not to Catholics alone, but to the whole world.  If you study the development of this teaching, it's amazing how it "follows the science," to use the current cliché.  In the mid-19th century, when biologists first achieved a modern understanding of fertilization and conception, the Church immediately tightened the canonical penalties for early abortion.  The old hypothesis of mediate animation was discarded because of scientific evidence.  The Democrat Party has never acted so rationally.

And Biden has never been so crazy on this issue as now.  Unwilling to impose his deep religious convictions on others, he's eager to impose on all the burden of paying for the crime he pretends to oppose.  Having received orders from Bernie Sanders and AOC, Joey plans to make you and me pay for all abortions, without limit.

It follows that anyone who votes for Joey is consenting to pay for abortions.  The guilt that this monstrosity should settle upon the human conscience, Catholic or not, is something only Dante could do justice.  And Carly publicly endorses Biden, despite the inevitable consequence of participating in child murder.  The responsibility is much, much greater.

By endorsing Biden, Carly Fiorina demnstrates that she's an extreme pro-abort.  If she were as pro-life as she professed to be in 2015, she could never have endorsed Biden.  It hurts to recognize that Carly was trifling with me then.  I've always been a sucker for a pretty face.  But for Carly's?

Today, as we approach Election Day, the true right-to-lifer is Donald Trump.  And, back in 2015, the true right-to-lifer was Donald Trump.  Thanks, Carly.  I had my doubts at the time.  But you've proved I did the right thing.

Tom Riley is widely known as a poet of the formalist school and is the author of Love Poems of a Hatemonger and The Ghost of Biden's Brain.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.