Power, politics, and Donald Trump’s position on abortion
In the wake of Donald Trump’s updated position on abortion for his 2024 presidential campaign, the war for the Right’s position on abortion has been reignited.
Last week, Donald Trump recorded a message in which he outlined his policy on abortion for his 2024 Presidential campaign. I’ll provide a few of the quotes and provide some commentary.
We want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, including the vast majority of Republicans, conservatives, Christians and pro-life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby. What could be more beautiful or better than that.
And:
The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life and the side of mothers, fathers, their beautiful babies, and that’s what we are. IVF is an important part of that, and our great Republican Party will always be with you in your quest for the ultimate joy in life.
In February I wrote about the Alabama Supreme Court decision that made IVF a subject of national discussion. Most Americans don’t know enough about how IVF works, and about the ethical concerns surrounding the practice. In short, the IVF results in the creation of many human embryos that are never implanted in a mother’s uterus. A great many of them are frozen for years (even decades), or they’re used for medical experimentation, or they’re merely discarded. I don’t know how well-informed Trump is on the topic, but he’s either uninformed or unconcerned about the fate of unborn human beings created via IVF.
More from Trump:
Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended.
“All” is doing a lot of work there, but I appreciate Trump emphasizing that legal scholars from both sides saw Roe as a bad judicial ruling and that millions of Americans wanted it overturned. Trump deserves the credit for choosing three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn it. Trump was integral in achieving something that many thought could not be done.
It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month. The concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth — and that’s exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth — is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.
The refrain from the Left used to be “legal, safe, and rare.” But “rare” seems increasingly to no longer be part of the pro-choice calculus. This is purely anecdotal of course, but when I engage in discussions on X with pro-choice people (which I enjoy doing), they almost always explicitly tell me they don’t support or approve of any legal limitations on abortion. Many on the left have indeed been quite radicalized on this issue.
To his claims about babies being executed after birth, it’s not entirely clear what he was referring to. He may be referring to partial birth abortion, or it may have been a reference to comments made by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who made the following comments in 2019:
If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
I think Trump was mostly doing two things with his “execution” comments: throwing red meat to his pro-life base, and seeking to paint his position on abortion as humane and sensible as opposed to what “those radical Democrats” are in favor of. So he’s probably mostly exaggerating here, but again, many Democrats are indeed getting more radical on this topic. Ok, but what IS Trump’s plan?
My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint. The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be.
At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or your faith. Do what’s right for your family and do what’s right for yourself, do what’s for your children, do what’s right for our country, and vote. So important to vote.
Now certainly all pro-life voters agree that we’re in a better place now that Roe has been overturned, and several states have banned abortion. But make no mistake: what Trump laid out in that quote is a pro-choice position, and one that he’s probably held privately since the time when he was a Democrat. We don’t know what’s in Trump’s heart. I suspect he really does find late term abortions to be immoral. But to whatever degree Trump holds a position on abortion that pro-lifers can affirm with him, it doesn’t come from a place of principle. Or if it does, he’s clearly willing to cast it aside for political expediency.
Honestly, the post-Roe world and Trump’s recent comments have exposed which influencers on the Right are principally opposed to abortion and which ones merely put up with the pro-life block for the purposes of coalition building. In the last several days a lot of people on the Right have basically been saying, “Look, Roe’s done. You got what you wanted. So stop talking about it, stop pushing pro-life legislation, stop talking about abortion, and get behind Trump.”
I’m sorry, but for me and for any principled pro-life advocate or voter, the issue has never been about merely abolishing Roe and getting this back to the states. It’s been about protecting the lives of unborn Americans. Ending Roe has already saved many, many lives, but there’s more work to be done.
In terms of political strategy, if Trump wants to preach a “leave it to the states” message, I’d rather he’d said something along these lines:
“Because of the actions I took as President, we brought in three great new justices. This change in the balance of power on the court, which wouldn’t have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected, is what you elected me to do. Now the issue has been returned to the states, as the federal system devised by our Founders and laid out in the Constitution dictates that it should be. My hope is that pro-life Americans will work within those states to further ensure that unborn babies are protected from abortion.”
That’s what I would have written for Trump had he come to me and said, “Look, I can’t do anything further on this issue at the national level. There’s just not the support for that when you look at the polls.”
Instead what Trump delivered was clearly a pro-choice message. “Let states and families decide what’s best.”
We can disagree on political strategy, but the Right must be a voting block committed to the belief that unborn Americans are human beings worthy of legal protection.