A Lesson for Pro-Lifers from the 2024 Election

Moralism is the Enemy of Thinking Politically

Despite the charges of pro-life critics in the months leading up to the 2024 election, the Trump administration apparently is pro-life after all. 

Since President Trump was sworn into office last week, he’s made a number of moves that display his anti-abortion bona fides. Trump has once again spoken to the March for Life (in his first term, he was the first president ever to address the gathering). Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance attended the March, where he gave his first speech as vice president. Vance told the crowd that he wants “more babies in the United States of America,” “more happy children in our country, and…beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.” 

And the Trump administration has backed up their words with numerous actions that will save babies.

Amidst the flurry of executive orders, President Trump restored anti-abortion policies that were upended by the Biden administration. He reinstated the Mexico City policy, which stops U.S. foreign aid from being used for abortion. Domestically, the president put up a similar firewall. Trump announced he will once again enforce the Hyde Amendment, which halts the use of federal “taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”

Furthermore, language in the executive order defending women from radical gender ideologues states that people are either male or female from “conception,” with the clear implication that that’s when life begins. The United States is also rejoining the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a coalition of more than 35 countries the U.S. spearheaded in 2020 that, among other objectives, aims to protect life at all stages. And Trump voiced support for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which Senate Democrats have disgracefully blocked.

Additionally, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion protestors who’d been arrested for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act at the command of the Biden Department of Justice, which decided it was beneficial for them to weaponize the law against dads, moms, and grandmas. One supposed threat to public order is Eva Edl, an 89-year-old anti-abortion activist who’s conducted sit-ins outside of pro-abortion centers for decades. As a child, Edl fled Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe after surviving in a Communist concentration camp. But the Biden administration’s lawfare machine targeted her nonetheless because she ran afoul of its abortion fix. 

The Trump administration’s frenetic pace during its first two weeks, which might be the most active any presidential administration has been in that span of time, means that there are likely more actions they’ll take to limit abortion in America. What will help toward that end is their strategy of throwing up as many targets as possible so that the Democrats and their apparatchiks in the permanent government can’t focus on a single policy, or even policy area.

While liberal public Christians such as Michael Wear, who served in the Obama administration’s faith-based initiative, have been predictably silent about Trump’s moves to protect babies, they’ve been roundly applauded by Christians across the Right. Those manning the top levels of pro-life institutions to abortion abolitionists are clearly thrilled by the president’s recent anti-abortion policy initiatives—and the speed at which they’re coming. 

But it’s striking that some of the same people who are reveling in the wins essentially campaigned for months against Trump during the general election. After it was apparent that Trump was going to be the GOP’s nominee in 2024, a group of establishment and anti-establishment voices alike worked to sap his support among anti-abortion Americans. Through a barrage of social media blasts, they made the case that pro-life Americans should pick an option other than Trump, or not vote at all. 

In the lead-up to the election, Live Action’s Lila Rose savaged both Trump and Vance, calling them a pro-choice ticket. In early September, for example, Rose said Trump was “making it impossible” for her to vote for the GOP in the presidential election. She campaigned hard against him after language touching on abortion in the GOP’s platform had been altered before the convention. But on November 2, she told her nearly 380,000 followers in a lengthy post that she’d be voting for Trump after all. And since his inauguration, she’s been celebrating the pro-life victories that the Trump administration has been racking up.

While absolute fealty to any presidential candidate is unbecoming—anti-abortion voters, after all, must let the Republican Party know that they shouldn’t take them for granted—working to shave off pro-life support for Trump after the primaries never made much sense politically. The Republican Party is the only national vehicle for the pro-life movement. And whatever mistakes they made in rhetoric and political strategy during the campaign, Trump and Vance were the first GOP candidates to deal with the difficulties of campaigning in a post-Dobbs world. 

Rose, fortunately, didn’t side with the Democrats in some twisted inversion of the Christian moral hierarchy of ends, as did a group of evangelicals like David French and Ray Ortlund. Nor did she take a wrong-headed, moralistic stand and vote for a third party. 

But her overt celebration of what Trump is doing now is strange in light of the damage she did to him before the election. It is possible that she was connected to the Trump campaign and contacted them repeatedly about her reservations concerning its pro-life messaging. Regardless, in the months before the election, she adopted a political strategy that was wrong for the moment, one better suited to the primaries. Though she made the right choice in the presidential election, her wild shifts are emblematic of a core problem that affects the pro-life world. 

Some pro-life leaders, as well as those on the antiestablishment side, need to think about their political strategies in the years ahead. During the presidential election, they shouldn’t have exaggerated the stance Trump and Vance took on pro-life matters—quite simply, they didn’t run as pro-choice candidates. Voicing concerns about Trump’s messaging and rhetoric was never the problem—but it should have been done effectively and not at the expense of undermining his support among pro-life voters. Imagine if this strategy had been successful and Trump lost to two pro-abortion radicals in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? 

Submitting to an overweening moralistic impulse that forgoes making prudential political calculations is an ever-present tendency when pro-lifers try to do politics. Recent evidence is when pro-life movement conservatives like former Vice President Mike Pence attacked Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for his abortion views. It matters little that Kennedy has publicly stated on numerous occasions, including to senators in his confirmation hearings on Wednesday, that he will implement the pro-life policies of the Trump administration as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Moralism is the enemy of clear political thinking. It shoves prudence aside for a mere assertion of principles that are abstracted from political reality. It’s why the Republican Party was completely lost in the wilderness before Trump arrived in 2015. The Right—especially Christians—need to jettison the temptation to succumb to moralism and instead view politics in a far more realistic manner. Rhetoric must be tethered to actions. Words alone are not enough. Neither are principles unconnected with wisdom. Dogmatic and doctrinaire approaches must cede way to strategic thinking about how to achieve ends given the circumstances we actually face—not the ones we wish were the case.


Image Credit: Unsplash

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Mike Sabo

Mike Sabo is a Contributing Editor of American Reformer and an Assistant Editor of The American Mind, the online journal of the Claremont Institute. His writing has appeared at RealClearPolitics, The Federalist, Public Discourse, and American Greatness, among other outlets. He lives with his wife and son in Cincinnati.

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