Trump Still has More in Common with the Pro-Life Leaders Than You Think
A federal abortion law prohibiting the practice after “a number of weeks or months” isn’t that far off from what pro-life organizations have already called for.
Look, I’m just on the internet to say unpopular things and get yelled at. Today’s unpopular thing to say is that Trump hasn’t betrayed pro-life leadership, but instead has taken cues from them.
In a recent interview with Kristen Welker, Donald Trump opened the possibility of signing a 15-week federal limit on abortions, without committing to it fully.
Many pro-life influencers are very angry at Trump for his comments—not necessarily because he supports a limit “after a number of weeks or months,” but because he wouldn’t commit to a 15-week limit. I’m sure you’ve seen the clip of Trump blasting DeSantis’ heartbeat bill, but that clip of the interview didn’t contain some very revealing statements Trump made shortly after about key pro-life leaders and where he perceives they stand on the issue. As some of the establishment pro-life blowback shows, Trump has been reading them like an open book. His only mistake was not committing to the federal limit the pro-life establishment has lobbied for. You can find the comments around the 29-minute mark.
“Both sides will come together, and for the first time in 52 years you’ll have an issue we can put behind us,” Trump said.
“Something will happen with the number of weeks, the amount of time, after which you can’t do it. And you know what? The most powerful people that are anti-abortion are okay with that now, and you know what, they weren’t okay with that even a year ago.”
Trump claimed that Mike Pence had softened from a previous position of saying the preborn should have constitutional rights, now showing favor for a 15 week limit. “Mike Pence said something about 15 weeks, too, which is a big change.”
Trump calling heartbeat bills “terrible” really fired up pro-lifers, but a federal abortion law prohibiting the practice after “a number of weeks or months” isn’t that far off from what pro-life organizations have already called for. Anti-abortion base voters see Trump’s attitude during the Welker interview as something that will set the mission to end abortion back, but they should also see in Trump’s statements a reflection of the cravenness and philosophical contortionism of their own pro-life leaders. They should see bills endorsed by the pro-life establishment, which seek to regulate evil instead of abolish it, as unacceptable setbacks.
When Trump suggested “15 weeks” as something “people are talking about,” he probably had in mind a House bill introduced last September, which would do just that. It’s called the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act. The 15-week limit is based on what writers of the bill say is strong evidence that preborn babies feel pain by this age. It’s enthusiastically endorsed by Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a heavyweight pro-life non-profit with the stated mission “to end abortion by electing national leaders and advocating for laws that save lives.”
Regulating evil: A new “Roe?”
While the Pain Capable act, as currently written, would not prevent states from further restricting or banning abortion, Democrats fervently support abortion and would never sign such a bill unless it guaranteed unfettered abortion access in states that have already declared abortion illegal. And if Trump means what he said in the Welker interview (that heartbeat bills are “terrible”), then a federal limit that’s acceptable to him would ensure broad legal protection for abortion in all 50 states. Unless both houses had strong GOP majorities led by statesmen with actual spines and Trump bends to their pressure, it stands to reason that the only plausible federal weeks-based abortion limit that Trump would end up signing is one that guarantees legal abortion across the entire country. [CB1]
In other words, the limit as Trump envisions it in the interview could very well become a new Roe: a proactive legal scheme that protects the vast majority of abortions.
Such a legal scheme would allow more than 93% of abortions at the current distribution of abortions among gestational weeks, likely far more when at-home chemical abortions are taken into account. (Also, I predict explosive growth for NIPT in this scenario, meaning women who may have aborted later due to “fetal abnormalities” will simply abort earlier based on the results of these non-invasive tests). This scheme is being actively promoted by pro-life politicians and a major pro-life organization, not even merely settled for when a ban couldn’t be achieved.
[As an aside, this is why pro-life talk of only supporting “winning political strategies,” as opposed to abolitionism, which is “unrealistic,” really chaps my hide. Maintaining the status quo (more or less) is considered a “winning political strategy.” When the “long-term abortion fight” is thought of in terms of generations or centuries, anything that leads to even marginally fewer abortions is considered a massive victory.]
Think about it: Trump, who has run twice for president as pro-life, has strongly implied he wants to protect the vast majority of abortions. SBA Pro-Life America, which purports to seek “the end of abortion,” welcomes a federal law that merely prohibits roughly 7% of abortions. The anti-abortion base, who earnestly wants to see abortion end, is right to be angry, but they shouldn’t just be angry at Trump. Trump is taking cues from the pro-life establishment.
It’s worth noting that pro-life icon Abby Johnson, CEO of the ministry And Then There Were None, which helps abortion workers exit the industry, has strongly condemned Trump’s comments. She posted that “abortion is murder” whether it’s pushed by a Democrat or a Republican. Whether that means she is opposed to a 15-week federal limit is unclear from recent statements.
SBA Pro-Life: Do they really want to end legal abortion?
But SBA has made a few illuminating statements regarding a 15-week limit that leave no room for confidence the organization really wants to end legal abortion. While SBA’s president Marjorie Dannenfelser praised DeSantis for his heartbeat bill, their press release about the Pain Capable Act last year said “it’s time to modernize our laws.” What does “modernizing” have to do with ending abortion? SBA’s goal seems to be to bring us in line with other pagan nations that are also practicing child sacrifice, not to tear down the alters.
Some might claim that’s not a fair criticism. Surely the war chest of SBA is being used to aggressively fight abortion, right? We must be missing something. Well, it’s in their press release, which is a carefully worded, public-facing document meant to be consumed by casual observers. Call me crazy, but if you put something in your press release, you want people to believe what you say. So either SBA is telling the truth, that they want to “modernize” legal abortion, or they are being deceptive, which is also concerning.
In a separate press release Dannenfelser is quoted: “Democrats’ pro-abortion extremism flies in the face of American public opinion which strongly supports compassionate limits on abortion…” SBA is appealing to “public opinion” that allowing more than 93% of child sacrifice to continue is “compassionate.” They’re validating this perspective by using it to bolster their position against late-term abortion. This opens the pro-life movement up to an easy challenge: if “compassionate” killing is all that matters, why don’t we just legislate the use of analgesia for later-term abortions? After all, protecting preborn humans from pain is what really matters, right?
This is what happens when the anti-abortion lobby tries to lean on deeply flawed public opinion instead of rebuking it and responding with conviction and consistency.
Dannenfelser also stated in response to Trump’s comments that, “Saving the lives of children and mothers in need… begins with focusing on the extremes of the other side.” If saving lives begins with focusing on “the extremes,” how is this truly a human rights-based approach? An approach based on the right to life begins with declaring that human rights are inalienable and image bearers of God are worthy of equal protection in the womb, no matter how small and how small and undeveloped they are.
Centrist compromise: pro-life self-immolation
But once the “extremes” are eliminated in the centrist position of pain-capability, there’s nowhere left for pro-lifers to go. The pro-life lobby can't just turn around after enacting schemes based on things like “pain capability” and say, "Hey, I know we just accepted this 'consensus' position that limits abortion at X number of weeks, but can we roll this back a bit more?” Who among Americans who don’t already identify as pro-life is going to take that seriously? Who's going to squabble over 15 weeks versus 13, or 10? No politician with any clout is going to expend political capital going below the “pain-capable” threshold. The mainstream pro-life movement will have run out of political momentum—or at least the momentum it takes to jump from pain capability to the beating heart as the chief solicitation of empathy and compassion.
GOP lawmakers who would pass such a “pain-capable” bill would likely cite similar, “moderate” laws in Europe as additional justification, perhaps touting how they’ve fulfilled SBA’s wish to “modernize our laws.” Even if such a scheme is lobbied broadly in state capitols instead of D.C., it is a voluntary concession to pro-abortion and abortion-apathetic Americans that this is a perfectly valid position—a position which stands in direct contrast to the total end of legal abortion.
Establishment pro-lifers who cling to key points of long-held pro-life dogma like “incremental” restrictions have set the movement up to fail; and maybe, if Trump is reading the situation right, have already admitted defeat to themselves. As Trump said, “they weren’t okay with [a 15-week limit] even a year ago.”
When the pro-life lobby and key influencers like Dannenfelser and Pence concede, by supporting abortion regulations like a 15-week limit, that the vast majority of abortions are legitimate and that the abominable practice is not worth even the meekest attempt to fully abolish, that's effectively the end of the pro-life movement as we know it. It will have made itself irrelevant by negating its own purported mission, having trapped itself into a centrist position in the myopic quest to remove, as Justice Kavanaugh put it in his Dobbs concurrence, “particularly gruesome or barbaric medical procedures.” But the entire practice of abortion is gruesome and barbaric. We should abolish it all.
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Women should be given the right to understand that the fetus in their body is a genetically distinct pro-infant that shares half of their genome and all of their humanity, making it murder to kill it intentionally through abortion.