Are Conservatives Getting Played by Trump on Abortion?

A Wake Up Call about Trump and the 2024 Election

In the last few weeks, four events have transpired within the Trump campaign that have caused alarm bells to go off for pro-life and anti-abortion conservative Christians. First, Trump unilaterally changed the GOP platform to strike out language calling for a national abortion ban. Second, Trump posted on Truth Social that his future administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”—a common euphemism for abortion. Third, in a recent Meet the Press interview, Vice Presidential candidate J. D. Vance swore that Trump would not impose a federal ban on abortion if elected to office. Finally, just recently, a report has surfaced that Trump is planning to provide government subsidies for nationwide IVF procedures.

A vigorous debate has erupted online between staunch supporters of Trump and both pro-life advocates and anti-abortionists (who both oppose abortion, but whose tactics and beliefs differ). On the pro-life side, Lila Rose, founder of Live Action,  strongly criticized Trump’s pro-abortion turn and encouraged him to be a fighter who stands for life. Ben Zeisloft, editor at The Sentinel and the most outspoken abolitionist, came out strongly against the former President, encouraged other Christians not to vote for him, and called him a “tyrant to innocent preborn babies.” A huge debate has ensued, and the MAGA movement is poised to rift.

Regime Election, Not Issues Election

Pro-lifers and abolitionists are often single-issue voters: their political calculus hinges on the abortion issue, and that alone. Trump, they say, is either a “pro-life candidate” or a “pro-abortion candidate.” Not only is there no middle ground, but there is also no other metric that matters. We agree with all opponents of abortion that abortion is objectively evil, is an act of murder for which the family members and doctors are culpable, and is a social practice that has resulted in the genocide of tens of millions. Conservatives are right to oppose abortion in the short and long term.

Yet despite the enormity of the abortion issue, other things matter as well—in fact, more so. To be blunt, the Presidential Election of 2024 is not an “issues” election, but a “regime” election. Voters who are weighing the candidates and deciding how to vote based upon the issues—abortion, immigration, housing costs, inflation, censorship, etc.—are already involved in a political miscalculation. Trump’s rise in 2015 and his surprise victory in 2016 represented a revolution and fracturing within America’s oligarchic ruling class. That civil war is ongoing, as evidenced by two failed impeachments, J6 persecutions, the Mueller probe, a failed assassination attempt, and a spat of criminal lawsuits filed against the former president. The current ruling class (i.e., the “establishment”) hates Trump and his populist movement with a passion, for he represents an existential threat to their power, wealth, clout, and legacy. He could undo all they have been seeking to achieve since the social and political revolutions under FDR.

The reason conservative Christians should vote for Trump is not because he’s a conservative (because he isn’t), or because he’s a Christian (not obviously so), or because he’s a paragon of traditional American values. The reason to vote Trump is because only under a second Trump administration is there any possibility of defanging a revolutionary and tyrannical Left that uses sexual deviancy, media lies and propaganda, historical revisionism, racial grievances and DEI, foreign wars, immigration invasions, and bureaucratic despotism to destroy America and crush the American people and their spirit. Any future hope for America lies in breaking apart the bureaucratic leviathan and reinvigorating regional and state powers under a renewed federalism.

Any hope for meaningful progress on the abortion front—from laws banning various kinds of abortions to changing the “hearts and minds” of the American people—also hinges upon a disaggregated American future where the Left has suffered a crippling and permanent political defeat. Justice Alito’s decision in the Dobbs case overturning Roe (whether correct or not) has opened up this possibility where there wasn’t one before. Ever since Roe, pro-lifers and abolitionists have been myopically focused on resolving the abortion matter at the national level (whether through congressional legislation or Supreme Court decisions). Yet, imposing a national abortion ban at this point would probably have the same effect that a national emancipation proclamation had in the 1860s. A cold civil war among the ruling class works in our favor; a hot civil war among the American people does not.

As an anti-regime party, Trump’s campaign has taken on the flavor of a dissenting unity ticket. Having won the backing of Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley heavyweights, as well as Tucker Carlson (another traitor to his class) and most recently RFK, Jr. (a Kennedy!) and Tulsi Gabbard (former Democrat), Trump’s strength lies in taking advance of crumbling parties and shifting alliances. The Reagan coalition and GOP that represented Movement Conservatism is over. That party specialized in ideological purity but political defeat. They were, in the iconic words of Sam Francis, “beautiful losers.” The advantage the legacy GOP held for conservative Christians from the Moral Majority to today is that it provided a vector to trumpet their moral, biblical, and ideological rectitude without having to put skin in the game in terms of real politics—rubbing shoulders with evildoers, compromising and dealmaking, utilizing patronage networks, and settling for less-than-ideal outcomes in order to win strategic victories.

What is going on with these concessions to abortion and IVF by Trump? The very nature of a unity ticket is that everybody gets something, but no one gets everything. Trump is clearly courting moderates and suburban women, who have typically been a sure bet for the Democratic Party. Yet there is something else: as post-Dobbs state referendums on abortion in Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and other red or purple states have demonstrated, even rank-and-file GOP voters favor some kind of access to abortion—in other words, they are resistant to uniform nationwide abortion bans. Thus, Trump’s statements are in many ways a reflection of his GOP/MAGA base. We may not like this, but it is the political reality. The Dobbs decision struck down Roe but did not deliver anti-abortionists the nationwide ban they wanted. That option is no longer in play, and the pro-life and abolitionist movements need to accept this and adapt new tactics.

Platforms and Tweets Aren’t Policies

In 2015-2016, Trump said and did all kinds of things during the primary and general election that had Conservatism, Inc. and traditional Christians wringing their hands with moral consternation and issuing harsh denunciations. Yet, once Trump was in office, he governed in a far more moderate and conservative way than anyone expected—in fact, he was the most successful conservative President in two generations. Once again, Trump is saying things in the lead-up to a highly contentious election—and perhaps the most important election in our generation—that have conservatives flustered. Have we learned anything?

The truth is that party platforms, campaign promises, and social media posts do not automatically translate into legislation or executive policy once in office. Although platforms are important for defining political coalitions—their common principles and aspirations—the GOP platform has long brimmed with shining moral phrases and visions of future American prosperity that have done nothing to change the current miserly direction of the government. Candidates routinely make promises on the campaign trail that go unfilled. Trump promised in 2016 to build a southern wall and make Mexico pay for it; neither materialized in any significant way, despite strong support from Trump’s base for fortifying the southern border. Why should we assume that Trump will veto anti-abortion legislation, or that he will support “women’s reproductive rights”?

Conservatives have a simplistic conception of how politics in America works. One first holds particular principles or values, and one then searches for a candidate that most closely aligns with those principles. Then a person votes for that candidate assuming that their party platform and campaign promises will guide government and policy during their administration. Having voted for the best candidate (or the “lesser of two evils”) in the general election, the private citizen then forgets about politics and goes back to their life. The truth is that electing “your guy” into office is merely the first step, and that what is said or done during the campaign is often done and said merely to increase the chances of victory. The real work of governing comes after that: getting the right officials placed as heads of important agencies; building coalitions between business, lobbyists, and political departments; manning important congressional committee chairs; and always and everywhere using state governors and legislatures to push your policy goals. This is the nature of the managerial and administrative system currently ruling this country. And this is, of course, what the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is all about—properly staffing a bureaucratic state—despite recent attacks from the left and Trump’s own disavowal.

Conservatives, therefore, must look past what Trump says and does right now. We must act collectively to ensure that he wins, while simultaneously begin organizing coalitions to sway him once he is in office. Conservatives and evangelical Christians will undoubtedly be called sell-outs and sycophants for taking this approach. The question will inevitably arise: “what would Trump have to do for you to no longer support him?” NeverTrumpers and elite evangelicals obsessed with “limiting principles” never tire of throwing these hypotheticals around, and then denouncing their interlocutors when less-than-satisfying answers are given. Yet, this question does not have an obvious answer and cannot be determined ahead of time. It is the kind of question that a romantic ideology chained to abstract principles would lay as a trap. 

The best answer to the question is to ask another question: “what will it take to permanently defeat a deadly and despotic Left?” That is the question Americans should be asking, and like the former question, it does not have a predetermined answer. The answer may be very uncomfortable, for we may have to go to great and severe ends (including allying with and using people who disagree with us) to stop child sacrifice, sexual abominations and degeneracy, genital mutilation and abuse of children, sex and child slavery, and a host of other evils. To perseverate on Trump’s platform, policy statements, or media socials before he has even won, and to pose this question to Trump supporters to put them in a double-bind, is to be an unserious person obsessed with self-righteously winning arguments instead of acting tangibly to end great wickedness and suffering in this country.

What we know is that Kamala Harris is determined to sign congressional legislation that will all but reinstate Roe—but this time as federal legislation binding on the states, and so much more difficult to dislodge—and that her Democratic and Progressive coalitions and the Obama political machine are backing her in this endeavor one-hundred percent. While there is doubt about whether Trump has the political will to push a pro-abortion agenda once in office, there is no doubt that a Harris-Walz Administration would gleefully impose such legislation upon the nation and come after states and locales that resist.

The simple truth is that Trump is amenable to conservative causes, while Harris is not. This is why every conservative and every Christian should vote for Trump. The decision is that straightforward. This is not 1980 and this is not the Reagan Revolution. We are in a late-stage republican epoch that might quickly transition to a principate. Conservatives and Christians of all stripes do not have the luxury of sitting out this election because someone offended their principles and didn’t make their particular raison d’état the be-all and end-all of the national campaign.

Conscience vs. Practical Intellect

A consistent refrain from abolitionists that they must “vote their conscience,” and this forbids them from voting for any presidential candidate who isn’t completely opposed to abortion and accepting of a nation-wide abortion ban. Yet this sentiment is invalid, since conscience cannot tell us who to vote for or why. The conscience, according to Thomas Aquinas, is the application of knowledge to action (STh I, Q. 79, Art. 13; I-II, Q. 19, Art. 5): murder is wrong, therefore, I should not murder. In meditation upon Rom. 2:14-15, Francis Turretin clarified that conscience includes both moral observations (syntērēsis) and moral consciousness (syneidēsis) (IET 1.3.5). Conscience is the innate faculty in man that murmurs against evil (condemning us when we err) and praises the good (commending right behavior). Girolamo Zanchi argued that conscience is a witness to the natural law that teaches us what is good, obligates us to it, and convicts us for our negligence: “It teaches us what is good, what is bad, what is just, what is unjust, what is upright, what is shameful, and therefore what should be pursued, what should be avoided. In short, natural law unites only those general principles of goodness and justice in our hearts” (On the Law in General, Thesis 8, III).

Conscience can only teach us of “general [moral] principles”: it tells us that murder is wrong, but it cannot tell us that the fetus is a person or that voting for such-and-such a candidate on this-or-that platform is morally permissible or prohibitory. We must rely upon the speculative intellect to learn about the development of the embryo or to reason ab absurdum that mere growth and development does not somehow magically turn a non-person fetus (a “clump of cells”) into a viable human person at birth. It is the practical intellect—prudence, the crowning virtue of politics—that must determine how to put our speculative knowledge together with moral understanding to produce right action best suited to attain particular goals. Prudence, of course, is powerless without knowledge and conscience, but it is distinct from them both.

Pro-life abolitionists have taken a well-trodden but cheap route in falling back upon “conscience” as justification for “protest votes” and political withdrawal. But conscience is not, in fact, instructing them to withhold their votes from Trump. That is a practical judgment they have made but are unwilling to own as such.

Not “Abolitionism” vs. “Incrementalism”

Understanding the role of the conscience for human knowledge and action can help us see that the common conflict over anti-abortion tactics is misguided. The pro-life camp has traditionally adopted an “incrementalist” strategy toward ending abortion: win election to office, work with friends and opponents on sensible legislation, make small gains where possible, and be patient for big breakthroughs. Abolitionists reject this approach and counter that it results in moral compromise, pro-life grift, and abortion policy entrenchment if not expansion. Instead, conservatives ought to seize the moral high ground, make no apologies, and demand total abolition—now! Their tactics align more closely with historic social justice movements in America, from temperance and prohibition to women’s suffrage and civil rights.

Both are wrong. While a “grand strategy” may be gamed out ahead of time, political tactics for achieving definite goals cannot be set in stone. While the final purpose of the anti-abortion movement in all its elements is the end of abortion-on-demand, the particular actions of individuals or coalitions taken to get there are always variable. This is the nature of prudential choices within political systems. The anti-abortion movement must learn to be political: it must be flexible enough to work slowly and incrementally within the system, exploiting loopholes, pressuring officials, building coalitions, and giving as much as it demands; yet it must be explosive and dynamic enough to capitalize on moments of weakness or disorder to effect radical and lasting change where possible. Permanently adopting a tactic of “abolitionism” or “incrementalism” merely reveals that anti-abolitionists are not genuine political actors—which explains why they are either totally ineffective or easily bought off.

Being unpredictable and adaptive would make the anti-abortion coalition formidable—a true Washington lobby with political will and muscle. Yet, this requires principled conservatives and evangelical Christians to do something few are willing to do: to abandon a “principled-means” approach to politics and replace it with an “ends-based” approach. What matters is that genuine human goods are protected or achieved, and that evil is defeated: “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21)—not, “talk smack about evil while being a good boy.” The means to accomplish good ends are constantly changing and may require that we supposedly “compromise” our cherished principles (especially when these are not true principles but practical judgments masquerading as moral precepts). As I’ve argued elsewhere, the means must be appropriate and proportional to accomplish the ends. You may have the best principles in the world and yet lose your country and your life in the process. Self-righteous and masochistic anti-abortionists lining up for martyrdom is not virtuous; the goal is to save unborn babies from being slaughtered, which requires that you fight and scrape to stay alive and win—through every means possible. Yet no one is asking you to lie or cheat or steal to vote for Trump, and that’s the point: a vote for Trump, even a Trump compromised on abortion, is not in violation of any precept of man’s conscience.

On Trump’s “Betrayal”

Anti-abortionists are angered by Trump’s supposed “betrayal”: as Zeisloft argues, “we cannot reward betrayal with our votes … the time is now for [Trump] to feel political consequences if he will not turn from this evil.” In many ways, thinking in terms of loyalty and betrayal is a healthy approach to politics. It emphasizes personal relationships and the transactional loyalty between a patron and his clients—between a political trustee and his constituents. Loyalty is very important to Trump, and so it is wise to play to this trait as conservatives and Christians seek to use Trump for good.

There are two problems with the above argument. First, Trump delivered a massive win for the anti-abortion coalition with his Supreme Court picks that delivered the Dobbs decision. While Alito’s reasoning and conclusion was not what the pro-life/abolitionists wanted, Roe v. Wade was struck down—a remarkable achievement! Trump delivered on his promise to appoint conservative Justices despite tremendous pressure and denunciation from the opposition; the anti-abortion coalition now owes him their complete loyalty. It is irrelevant to complain that, yes, Roe was overturned, but not in the way that we wanted it to be. Instead, the pro-life/abolitionist movements after Dobbs should have immediately adapted and pivoted to a state-by-state strategy for defeating abortion at the local level. Their current mumblings about “betrayal” are rash, and reveal that they cannot let go of their sacred cow—an immediate national abortion ban.

Second, there’s a greater betrayal we need to think about. And that is Trump’s betrayal of his own ruling and elite class. Just like Tucker, RFK, Jr., and Gabbard, Trump is a traitor to his own people, and so has earned the ruling class’s fury and vehemence. He has borne that fury on his shoulders for eight years, and yet still he is the people’s representative and fights for America. He has not folded under the Establishment’s pressure (from both Democrats and Neoconservatives). Christians and conservatives thus owe him respect and fealty for his fortitude, doggedness, and bullet dodging—for not only resisting the current Regime, but for daring to run again for the Presidency.

Instead of taking offense at a unity ticket that doesn’t deliver every last jot and tittle for our principled stance, conservatives should be far more concerned with how to take advantage of Trump’s betrayal of his own class in order to break the stranglehold that the Regime has had on the country for the past seventy-five years. Only once that chokehold is broken can we hope to revive good government that is both pleasing to God and protective of life and the common good. To accomplish this long-term goal, however, it may be necessary to suffer a backhanded slap across the face occasionally from a political leader who is being attacked on all sides and who is seeking to represent an impossibly diverse unity coalition. Conservatives must be robust and anti-fragile enough to take the kind of body-blows that are going to come in our current political environment. We must ruthlessly keep our eyes fixed on our goals, and we must act in unison toward those greater goods, despite all the nastiness directed at us or the compromises required of us.

Instead, the anti-abortion movement is merely revealing itself as a non-political movement: a one-dimensional and utopian doctrine that becomes brittle and resentful when its impossible demands are not met.

Third Parties and “Protest” Votes

Pro-lifers and abolitionists are vowing to withhold votes from Trump and either vote third party or downstream on the ballot (or both). Downstream ballot voting is good and necessary; but third-party “protest” voting, such as for the American Solidarity Party or the Constitution Party, is foolish.

The first reason it is foolish is because in our political system, third parties are meaningless. The American electoral system is a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system. In such a scenario, there can only be two parties or two candidates that compete to win. Third parties only function to lure votes away from those candidates who can win. Voters who believe they are “protesting” by voting for a third party are not being “heard” or “seen” by the winner—or anyone else. The party that wins can claim a “mandate” from the people—from their voters and constituents—to govern as they have promised. No Democratic or Republican president who has won the presidency has ever paid the slightest attention to the demands of the Solidarity, Constitution, Libertarian, or Green parties who hold no seats in Congress, no governorships, and no seats in the state legislatures (the Left’s obsession with environmentalism and “climate change” has nothing to do with the Green Party, its platform, or leadership). Not until our electoral system is altered—until, say, a system of ranked choice voting is adopted—will voting for anyone other than the two primary candidates count for anything.

Second, this means that a third-party “protest” vote is actually a non-political act. Voting is supposed to be the way the people act politically. But the virtue of politics is prudence, and prudence always acts for the good but in a way that can achieve the good. A third-party vote driven by adherence to one’s “principles” is not a political act but a philosophical statement. There is no prudential action involved, merely speculative intellect pre-determining a throw-away vote. Thus, voting for a third party that can’t be first-past-the-post on the basis of principle alone is an anti-political, anti-democratic act. It is a non-vote, merely a silent protest that won’t be heard and so won’t have any effect. Any electorate determined to take this route should simply stay home. They have conceded that others must rule over them.

Conclusion

Conservatives and Christians must hold the line and vote for Trump. Close the shield wall. Do not listen to the siren appeals of pro-lifers and abortion abolitionists who are demanding that you stand down and stand aside. They are wrong, foolish, and dangerous. If you want Cackling Kamala as your President, follow their lead. But if you love this country and its people—including millions of unborn innocents—then throw your vote and your weight behind the only chance we have: Donald J. Trump. Hold your nose if you must. But hold the line.

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