A Last-Minute Plea to Vote for Trump

What Should Be Trump’s Position on Abortion?

Easy answer: Trump, like everyone, should oppose abortion and fight for the legal protection of all innocent human life from conception to natural death. 

But he is running for president of the United States. So, in that context, the question should be rephrased: What position should Trump take on abortion—in this election? Is it wrong for him to have “adjusted” his position on abortion? Has he “thrown the unborn under the bus” (as an avid pro-lifer friend of mine has said)?  

Some think that it would be better for Trump to lose than to abandon the pro-life cause—that it is better to take a principled stand and lose than to compromise on the truth and win. I think that would be disastrous, and a loss for that reason would work in the future to dissuade others from running on a pro-life platform.  

Many pro-lifers believe that Trump has betrayed them for these reasons:

1. Trump opposes a national ban on abortion.
2. He pushed for changes in the GOP platform so that it does not assert the fundamental right to life of all innocent human beings. 
3. The platform leaves it to states to pursue any further restrictions on abortion.
4. He initially said he would support overturning Amendment 4 in Florida that would have overturned a ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy (but later reversed himself).  
5. He supports funding of in vitro fertilization, which virtually always involves the destruction of embryos.
6. He supports making the abortion pill readily available.
7. He said that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”

Trump’s son Eric, in an interview at the Republic National Convention, said that the changes made to the platform reflect what Trump’s views have always been.  

Let me be clear (as they all say!): I do not think Trump is personally a genuine pro-lifer. I think he would like abortion to be more accessible than would any genuine pro-lifer. I think Trump either truly does think it is a state issue or he thinks that is the most politically expedient position. I believe he supported the pro-life cause in 2016 because it was politically advantageous to do so. Nonetheless, we need to be grateful that he kept his promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would work to overturn Roe v. Wade and thereby did more for the pro-life movement than any other president—and helped the country in many other regards as well.

Here I propose to offer a defense of Trump’s decision to retreat from advocacy of the pro-life cause and try to persuade those who remain reluctant to vote for him because he is not sufficiently pro-life to reconsider their opposition to him on this point.

I find it encouraging that most who express great distress at Trump’s current positions have made the common-sense decision to vote for Trump nonetheless. They recognize that Harris will be incredibly worse on abortion (and really every other issue): she will labor to liberalize state laws against abortion, will make it illegal for Catholic hospitals to refuse to do abortions, will pay for contraceptives, and will persecute pro-lifers. Voting for Trump (or against Harris) is voting for free speech, controlling immigration, protecting school choice, ending foreign wars, stopping wasteful government spending, ensuring fair elections, ending promotion of transgenderism, reducing taxes, protecting farmers, and stopping sex trafficking—and the list goes on. Those measures, in themselves, are strong pro-life initiatives. Again, those of us who want a chance to fight for protection of the unborn know we won’t be able to do so under Harris—even those of us who don’t get jailed for our pro-life beliefs.

Yet there are those who still find it problematic to vote for Trump even though they find voting for Harris to be unthinkable. They are considering voting for a third party, writing in another candidate, or not voting at all (I think those are legitimate choices in non-swing states, though it would be great if Trump could win both the electoral college and the national vote as well). Again, they think Trump has “thrown the unborn under the bus” and that to vote for him would be to abandon the unborn.

My view is that even were Trump to be 100 percent opposed to abortion, and had he taken a strong pro-life stance, or even just left the platform as it was, his candidacy would have been dead in the water. I know only one person who thinks Trump could win were he to campaign for the rights of the unborn. Keep in mind that 63 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in all cases (59 percent of Catholics) and that the mainstream media is 100 percent pro-abortion. Many have noted that “abortion” is treated as sacred on the Left. Even with Trump’s moderate position on abortion, he has been relentlessly attacked for it—keeping abortion legal (and hatred of Trump) seem to be the primary reasons people are voting against him.   My view is that even were Trump to be 100 percent opposed to abortion, and had he taken a strong pro-life stance, or even just left the platform as it was, his candidacy would have been dead in the water. Tweet This

It seems no one is criticizing Trump for not opposing gay marriages or adoption of babies by gay couples or use of IVF by gay couples to conceive a child. I think those are extremely important issues and that we need to work against them—but in this climate, it is best to avoid them when seeking election. Our approach to elections and abortion at this point needs to be similar. We need to win so we can change people’s thinking on abortion and eventually pass laws protecting the innocent from conception to natural death.

I am not saying the Trump/Vance campaign did the best they could have done on the abortion issue. I do wonder if promising government grants to pregnancy help centers and reducing the costs for adoption would have helped diminish the opposition to Trump/Vance on abortion.  

The biggest obstacle I find for voting for Trump and Vance is their advocacy for IVF. Where did that come from? I know a few of Musk’s kids were conceived by IVF and that he is a great proponent of people having more children. Has he been pushing for this? As some politicians say, we need a national conversation on this. I suspect most Americans do not know how many embryonic human beings are killed through IVF. I believe a good Catholic apologist could convince Vance that IVF is immoral and that it is wrong to support the abortion pill. I believe Vance wants to be a faithful Catholic—he is an “all-in” kind of guy. Indeed, I think he may eventually be able to persuade Trump to change his views on abortion.

Politics is the art of compromise, and I think most of the “compromises” Trump has made are likely wise. He is not advocating for abortion “rights”; he is standing back. Lila Rose of Live Acton reports that Trump met with her for two hours; Brian Burch of CatholicVote has spoken with Robert Kennedy Jr. Both were mildly encouraged by those meetings. After all, Robert Kennedy became a critic of untested vaccines when a woman refused to leave his front porch until he promised to examine the data. We have at least a chance with Trump and team.  

So, please, don’t let Trump’s position on abortion prevent you from voting for him. I am arguing here that we should largely be pleased with his approach. If he wins, we must then zealously use the chance we have been given to protect the institutions that will enable us to fight for the unborn. And we must never stop fighting for the unborn until they are fully protected.