Pro-Lifers Helped Bring Trump to Power. Why Has He Abandoned Us?

Opinion

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By The New York Times

Published 12 months ago on

July 21, 2024

An anti-abortion demonstrator outside the Supreme Court in Washington, April 17, 2024. (Jesse Rieser/The New York Times)

Post-Dobbs, the GOP appears to be distancing from traditional pro-life stances, focusing on electoral success over core convictions.
The Republican Party's evolving base is less churchgoing, with many young conservatives more focused on "owning the libs" than traditional values.
Despite Roe's repeal, abortion rates haven't declined, and the GOP's commitment to pro-life causes is increasingly questioned.

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Opinion by Patrick T. Brown on July 19, 2024.

ROE IS HISTORY, BUT ABORTION HASN’T ENDED.

I am far from the only young conservative whose interest in politics was sparked by the issue of abortion. In high school and college, we would stake out early-morning spots on the National Mall for the annual March for Life, write postcards to our elected officials and pray rosaries outside abortion clinics.

Along the way, many of us found ourselves in the Republican Party, often picking up other conservative causes along the way — low taxes, limited government, strong defense, border security. The bundle of preferences could be a bit ungainly at times, but we found progressive voices quick to shout down attempts for pro-lifers to work with Democrats. So the G.O.P. became home.

It’s hard to feel that way now. While traditional social conservatives and the Republican Party might be allies on some key issues, it looks like it is no longer just one political party that wants us to shelve our convictions in the name of political expediency. It’s both.

This shift has been a long time coming, but recent events have snapped it into focus. A secularizing America, plus the shifting composition of the Republican Party, means many G.O.P. voters are less churchgoing than prior generations. Many young conservatives, in particular, seem more enthusiastic about owning the libs than strengthening the family.

That might help explain why Republican politicians seemed so unprepared for the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. They could have prepared by focusing on politically tenable compromise and a wider array of supports for pregnant women and families. Instead, their political strategy in 2022 largely consisted of trying to change the subject, then blaming pro-lifers for poorer-than-expected midterm election results. Meanwhile the G.O.P. has been an unreliable partner in countering the state referendums that have expanded legal protections for abortion in Michigan, Ohio and other states.

The Rewritten Republican Platform

Now a rewritten Republican Party platform rubber-stamped by Trump loyalists largely backtracks from its prior goal of protecting the unborn nationwide. Sweeping language declaring a constitutional right to life has been replaced by a somewhat garbled mention of due process, specifying that states are “free to pass laws” that restrict abortion. A mention of the traditional understanding of marriage is also gone. It even omits standing against taxpayer funding for abortion, offering only a mention of opposing “late-term abortion” — a category often understood as excluding the roughly 99 percent of abortion procedures that occur before 21 weeks of pregnancy. The new platform makes sure to include positive mentions of birth control and I.V.F., yet neglects any reference to pregnancy resource centers or child care.

The former president likes to encourage conservatives to place political victory over moral commitments: “You must follow your heart on this issue, but remember, you must also win elections,” he said in an April video.

His running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, previously described himself as “100 percent pro-life,” supporting a national ban on abortion and even making a case against exceptions for rape and incest. He later encouraged conservatives to do a better job making the “moral argument” against abortion, which indeed they should. Yet this month on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Vance echoed Mr. Trump’s approval of the abortion pill, which is used in a majority of abortions nationwide. In his acceptance speech Wednesday night, the unborn made no appearance at all.

There is a sound strategic case, and even perhaps a constitutional one, against pursuing a federal abortion ban, particularly while politics around the issue are so unsettled. Officeholders or candidates can express their skepticism that a federal abortion ban would be prudent or achievable, as former Gov. Nikki Haley did repeatedly during her unsuccessful run for the nomination.

The Fine Line

But there is a fine line between acknowledging politics as the art of the possible and setting aside core convictions in the pursuit of electoral success. Mr. Trump has repeatedly congratulated himself for having returned abortion decisions back to the states. Yet I have found no high-profile statements from the nominee supporting state laws that restrict abortion. On the contrary, he criticized abortion “hardliners.” In 2023, he called the six-week abortion ban in his home state of Florida a “terrible thing.”

All the while, the number of abortions has not fallen since the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe, fueled in part by the rising prevalence of medication abortions. And yet, at the national level, the G.O.P. seems to hope the issue will simply fade away. Eric Trump recently suggested that conservatives who are disappointed by the new party platform should “stop worrying about the little spot on the wall in the basement” when the country is facing the equivalent of holes in the ceiling.

Pro-life organizations that insist the G.O.P. remains as pro-life today as it was in the recent past are deluding themselves. And the socially conservative groups who cheer the former president’s commitment “to the causes that millions of Americans hold so dear — protecting life and promoting the family” — may be signing up for their own political obsolescence. Politics will always require some triangulation and prudence, but too much accommodation is a path to electoral irrelevance.

Many religious conservatives made common cause with the Trump campaign in 2016 with an eye to the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court. Former President Trump and his camp may indeed feel like their end of the bargain has been upheld. Roe, after all, is consigned to the history books. Now, just like the old G.O.P. establishment they supplanted, they seek to harness social-conservative votes for other policy ends.

Pro-life conservatives should be cleareyed about this new phase of politics. The Republican nominee seems all too content to sell out those of us who got into politics to advance policies that protect what we see as human life from its earliest stages. Pro-life groups should not be too quick to offer Mr. Trump rhetorical cover nor accommodate Mr. Trump’s redefinition of common sense on the issue. At this point, the best-case scenario for pro-lifers may be hoping that a second Trump administration hires some social conservatives for key administration roles — but that is far from a given.

Getting rid of Roe was a tremendous legal victory for conservatives. Building on it will require political courage and savvy. But if it results in higher abortion rates, conservative leaders expressing support for the abortion pill and the continued diminishing of pro-life influence on the Republican Party, it will have cost a bitterly high price.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Patrick T. Brown/Jesse Rieser
c.2024 The New York Times Company