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That has not stopped Democrats from demagoguing the issue. President Biden has warned that “Trump will ban abortion nationwide.” Biden served for decades in the Senate, so he knows that is a lie. By leaving abortion to the states, Trump takes this dishonest argument away from Democrats.
Indeed, by taking a federal abortion ban off the table, Trump is turning the tables and positioning Republicans to make clear that Democrats are the abortion extremists. The Democratic Party used to treat abortion as a necessary evil that should be “safe, legal and rare,” but today it is something to be celebrated (as when Kamala D. Harris became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic). The new Democratic consensus that taxpayer-funded abortion should be permitted up to the moment of birth is a position supported by less than one-third of Americans. Republicans can now go on offense on abortion and focus the debate on the Democrats’ radical position.
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Finally, Trump is setting the pro-life movement up for victory in the long-term battle for hearts and minds. For decades, conservatives assured the American people that overturning Roe would not ban abortion but simply send the issue back to the states. Voters now see many of those same conservatives saying they want to federalize the issue after all. They understandably feel misled.
The pro-life movement needs to meet Americans where they are — not where we wish they were — on abortion. Polls show that most want to keep abortion legal. But 66 percent support placing limits on abortion, according to a Knights of Columbus-Marist poll in January. What should those limits be? The good news is that 58 percent support limiting abortions to the first three months of pregnancy or less. The bad news is that is down from 69 percent a year earlier. Support for restricting abortion has slipped as Americans have grown concerned about Republican overreach.
The best way to bring those numbers back up is keeping the debate in the states, our laboratories of democracy. When abortion is decided at the state level, far more Americans end up with the abortion policy they want. Red states will get stricter abortion policies, blue states will have the opposite, and voters in purple states will demand a middle ground. And even at the state level, the pro-life movement should focus on incremental change as it seeks to convince more Americans over time of the sanctity of unborn human life. If pro-lifers push too far too fast, they will end up electing more pro-abortion Democrats who will take our country in the opposite direction.
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Indeed, if Democrats succeed in using the threat of a federal abortion ban to keep control of the Senate in November, then the pro-life cause could suffer an irreparable blow. With Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) both retiring, Democrats likely would finally have the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster — allowing them to codify Roe with a simple majority if they flip the House and Biden is reelected. That would unleash chaos: From that point on, abortion policy would swing from one extreme to another depending on who controlled Congress and the presidency, with every election representing an existential threat to either side.
“At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” Trump correctly said. And the best way to persuade more people to support the cause of life is to leave abortion decisions where conservatives once promised they would be decided: in the states.
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Donald Trump is under fire from some in the pro-life movement for his decision to oppose a federal abortion limit, declaring instead that abortion should be left to states. We “took [abortion] out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds and vote of the people in each state,” Trump said Monday in a Truth Social video. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
As a pro-life conservative, I get the disappointment. But Trump is right.
Let’s start with the reason we can restrict abortion at all today: Trump is the only pro-life president in six decades with a perfect record in Supreme Court appointments. The decisive 6-to-3 conservative majority he created overturned Roe v. Wade, the seemingly impossible goal of the antiabortion movement for nearly half a century. As president, he defunded the U.N. Population Fund over its support for abortion in China, allowed states to withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood, implemented the Protect Life Rule prohibiting Title X family-planning funds from going to clinics that perform abortions, and defended the religious liberty of the Little Sisters of the Poor. And Trump was the first president to speak in person at the annual March for Life. No president more openly embraced the pro-life movement, or delivered it more victories, than Donald Trump.
Second, he is being honest with pro-life voters: Passing a 15-week federal abortion ban is not possible in Congress anytime soon. That’s because doing so requires 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, and there is zero chance Republicans will win that kind of majority in the next four years. So campaigning on a federal abortion limit would be an empty promise to pro-life Americans — one that Trump would be powerless to fulfill.
That has not stopped Democrats from demagoguing the issue. President Biden has warned that “Trump will ban abortion nationwide.” Biden served for decades in the Senate, so he knows that is a lie. By leaving abortion to the states, Trump takes this dishonest argument away from Democrats.
Indeed, by taking a federal abortion ban off the table, Trump is turning the tables and positioning Republicans to make clear that Democrats are the abortion extremists. The Democratic Party used to treat abortion as a necessary evil that should be “safe, legal and rare,” but today it is something to be celebrated (as when Kamala D. Harris became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic). The new Democratic consensus that taxpayer-funded abortion should be permitted up to the moment of birth is a position supported by less than one-third of Americans. Republicans can now go on offense on abortion and focus the debate on the Democrats’ radical position.
Finally, Trump is setting the pro-life movement up for victory in the long-term battle for hearts and minds. For decades, conservatives assured the American people that overturning Roe would not ban abortion but simply send the issue back to the states. Voters now see many of those same conservatives saying they want to federalize the issue after all. They understandably feel misled.
The pro-life movement needs to meet Americans where they are — not where we wish they were — on abortion. Polls show that most want to keep abortion legal. But 66 percent support placing limits on abortion, according to a Knights of Columbus-Marist poll in January. What should those limits be? The good news is that 58 percent support limiting abortions to the first three months of pregnancy or less. The bad news is that is down from 69 percent a year earlier. Support for restricting abortion has slipped as Americans have grown concerned about Republican overreach.
The best way to bring those numbers back up is keeping the debate in the states, our laboratories of democracy. When abortion is decided at the state level, far more Americans end up with the abortion policy they want. Red states will get stricter abortion policies, blue states will have the opposite, and voters in purple states will demand a middle ground. And even at the state level, the pro-life movement should focus on incremental change as it seeks to convince more Americans over time of the sanctity of unborn human life. If pro-lifers push too far too fast, they will end up electing more pro-abortion Democrats who will take our country in the opposite direction.
Indeed, if Democrats succeed in using the threat of a federal abortion ban to keep control of the Senate in November, then the pro-life cause could suffer an irreparable blow. With Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) both retiring, Democrats likely would finally have the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster — allowing them to codify Roe with a simple majority if they flip the House and Biden is reelected. That would unleash chaos: From that point on, abortion policy would swing from one extreme to another depending on who controlled Congress and the presidency, with every election representing an existential threat to either side.
“At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” Trump correctly said. And the best way to persuade more people to support the cause of life is to leave abortion decisions where conservatives once promised they would be decided: in the states.
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