My Mom Is Voting For Trump: I Can't Accept It, But I Won't Let It Bother Me

My mom is voting for the Republican nominee this election.

Yes, orange-puff-he-who-shall-not-be-named.

My mom doesn't care about the economy, military, or Second Amendment rights: she only cares about abortion.

Not only is my mom fully against abortion for religious reasons, but she does not “believe” in climate change or marriage equality, even with an openly gay son.

Honestly, I can't understand it.

We've gone down different paths in many ways. I went to college and on to get my masters, while her highest education was high school. I want to have a career; she wanted to get married and have children by 25. She found God and won't let anyone forget it, whereas I could give two shits about religion — especially after attending Catholic school my entire life.

I can look past religious beliefs, especially in my mom. I just can't deal with it when people try to force their beliefs on me.

Let's go back to the topic of abortion, since it's the one issue she's voting on.

The other day we were watching TV, and a Hillary Clinton ad came on. She looked at me and said, “You know, she is okay with partial birth abortions.” Okay cool mom, how is that relevant with everything else going on. Heard of ISIS? The refugee crisis?

All she knows is that dems are pro-choice and the GOP is pro-life. End of discussion.

What she probably doesn't know about partial-birth abortions, or D&X (Dilation and Extraction) procedures, is that in an interview with NPR, health correspondent Julie Rovner quoted an abortion-rights research group that found in 2000, only 0.2 percent of the 1.3 million abortions believed to be performed were D&X. So they are not exactly common. Not every pregnant woman is going around asking for these procedures on a daily basis.

And anyway, I can't understand why my mother in Long Island should be concerned with the choices a woman makes in Oregon about her own body.

Or how two men in California getting married will drastically overturn her entire life.

I think many people have forgotten about the separation of church and state, which is clearly defined in the First friggin' Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Forcing the entire country to abide by your moral or religious beliefs is unconstitutional. Why hasn't anyone been talking about this?

I would understand if my mother was voting for Donald Trump because she was angry that Clinton hasn't done anything about national policy issues since she has been in office. But that isn't true.

I know we will never agree on it, and while I don't accept it, I also don't let it bother me.

But what gets me the most, is that even with all the horrible things Trump has said about women and minorities, the way he has treated employees, the way he tries to sue anyone and everything that moves, and how people think he can run a country when he can barely form a coherent sentence, my mother can stand there and defend his actions on that one premise: he is pro-life.