Trump turns on the anti-abortion movement just ahead of the March for Life. Typical | Opinion
In less than a week’s time, more than 100,000 people will descend upon Washington for the annual March for Life.
This year, of course, the tenor will be quite different.
Roe v. Wade, the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case that paved the way for legal abortion nationwide, is no more.
While abortion still occurs in many states, its national legal underpinnings are now all but dissolved.
In many ways, and as difficult as it may be to concede, we have former President Donald Trump to thank for that.
Without his nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — the pro-abortion movement would never have been dealt the blow it endured when the Dobbs ruling reversing Roe v. Wade was handed down last spring.
But only three years after appearing at the March for Life and declaring himself the “most pro-life president in American history,” Trump seems to have soured on the movement that empowered him.
He has all but entirely abandoned what is, perhaps, his greatest presidential victory.
In an effort to deflect criticism over midterm election losses, Trump recently asserted on his Truth Social platform that: “It was the ’abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”
Indeed, several candidates took these (understandably difficult) positions on abortion, and many were in competitive states where a more moderate, or at least more nuanced, position might have made a difference.
Yet Trump endorsed many of these losing candidates in spite of their supposed “flawed” positions on abortion, and it’s doubtful that he advised his endorsees of the error of their ways.
As Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review explained, there is more evidence to suggest (what has since become conventional wisdom), that voters punished Republicans more for their close ties to Trump and his wide array of election conspiracy theories than their opposition to abortion.
“Republican governors who signed bans or partial bans on abortion cruised to re-election in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas,” Ponnuru wrote.
Indeed, Gov. Greg Abbott has long been a staunch pro-life politician.
Despite his apparent difficulty in clearly articulating the principles behind his position during his only debate with Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke, who favors almost no abortion restrictions, Abbott sailed to victory in November.
Texas’ abortion ban was in no way a political liability for its Republican majority.
Of course, Trump did not stop at criticizing failed pro-life candidates. In his effort to evade all blame, he went after the pro-life movement itself.
“Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again,” he added.
This claim is demonstrably false.
One does not need a fact checker to verify that in the wake of Dobbs, tens of thousands of activists and volunteers have mobilized to push for pro-life legislation in states, to staff crisis pregnancy centers, and to serve expectant mothers in need all over the country.
In the months since Dobbs, they have endured waves of vandalism and violence, campaigns of misinformation, and even arrest.
It is these people and their continued commitment to the pro-life cause that Trump is truly betraying.
That said, in the wake of Dobbs, the pro-life movement would benefit from some message adjustment.
While there is a powerful case to be made for abortion bans without exceptions, incremental steps have served the movement well to this point and should not be abandoned.
And efforts to transform hearts and minds through service to women, children and families in need should (and no doubt will) continue to bring people to the pro-life cause.
But the change the movement needs most right now is a clean break from Trump — who, no one’s surprise, will not be speaking Thursday at the March for Life.
