Pro-lifers hitting Trump on abortion should see that saving babies means winning now | Opinion

As Donald Trump posted his official abortion position this week, pro-life voters had the chance to assess his fidelity to the cause, while Republican voters more broadly gauged the value of his stance in a November general election.

Those expecting him to announce a strong push toward federal abortion restrictions were instantly and loudly disappointed. As the former president spoke of embracing post-Roe v. Wade states-rights federalism, online laments flowed immediately, accusing him of selling out the pro-life movement, lacking core values and stooping to political expediency.

Most of those complaints came from the community of pro-lifers who share my unyielding belief that all unborn life is sacred. That means the rape and incest exceptions touted by Trump are morally flawed; it also means we ultimately seek a nation that uniformly protects the unborn just as we uniformly bolstered human dignity by outlawing slavery.

But speaking from the most ardent heights of pro-life devotion, I still found the Trump statement to be the precisely right thing to say in this moment.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. And a race of any length is not helped by self-defeating strategy. The first thing the pro-life movement requires is the defeat of Joe Biden and as many Democrats as possible in November. That simply will not happen with candidates pushing federal abortion restrictions in a nation that is only beginning to acclimatize to the end of the Roe era.

The extinction of the flawed 1973 ruling that concocted a universal right to abortion properly leaves the matter to the states, where even some electorates expected to be pro-life have delivered surprises. Kansas rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have declared there is no right to an abortion. Kentucky declined to amend its constitution to include language stating it does not protect abortion rights. Ohio voted down a measure that would have made it harder to pass an abortion-rights constitutional amendment.

Americans are far less cavalier about terminating pregnancies, especially late-term, than we were when Roe was decided. Pro-life arguments over the decades have succeeded in narrowing the public latitude for such decisions. But we are nowhere close to a consensus that abortion needs to be restricted in every state.

That’s why it was sensible for Trump to embrace the freedom given to states that wish to protect life as part of a “will of the people” argument that could actually help him win in November. States also maintain the right to allow abortions repellent to the pro-life perspective, but those are fights for another day. The road to that day is blocked if a second Biden term arrives, along with Democratic control of the House and Senate. How many babies will we have saved then?

And what precisely did disillusioned pro-lifers want Trump to say? Mike Pence called his statement a “slap in the face,” as if the president who engineered the demise of Roe with constitutionalist Supreme Court nominees was somehow a turncoat. The number of Republicans telegraphing federal abortion restrictions is so short because they know it is potential political suicide this year.

That can always change, but for now, there is a lesson: Be careful what you wish for. If any president signs federal abortion limits into law, that will be the moment where we declare the issue is no longer the business of the states. We will then be one election cycle away from Democrats codifying nationwide abortion permissiveness.

There is only one way to nationally protect the unborn babies whom pro-lifers fight for — a constitutional amendment. That requires two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states, a far higher bar than a simple federal law.

I told my fellow pro-lifers in 2022 that the death of Roe was a beginning, not an end. If we envision such national protections, we have a lot of minds and hearts to change. I don’t believe Donald Trump is as pro-life as I am; but the president who restored a constitutional state-by-state abortion-rights landscape has taken a stand that echoes the current Republican consensus and bolsters his November prospects.

Pro-life voters should know that we were never going to get everything we wanted immediately after the fall of Roe. But we can surely lose a lot in short order if we overplay our hand and start losing the elections we need to stay on track.

Mark Davis hosts a morning radio show in Dallas-Fort Worth on 660-AM and at 660amtheanswer.com. Follow him on X: @markdavis .

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