Did Trump just flip on abortion?
Pro-life advocates are raising the alarm over a social media post last week from President Trump along with comments made by J.D. Vance over the weekend in an interview.
And rightly so.
Last week on TruthSocial, President Trump said his administration will be good for “women and their reproductive rights.” Separately, J.D. Vance pledged that the Trump administration would not sign a ban on abortion.
Smart politics?
Or are Donald Trump and J.D. Vance now pro-abortion?
Let’s start with some facts:
- As President, Donald Trump pledged to appoint pro-life justices. He stood against some of the most shameless attacks on any judicial nominee. He promised to work toward the overthrow of Roe v. Wade … and the justices he appointed delivered.
- Donald Trump reinstated – and strengthened – the “Mexico City Policy” blocking taxpayer money from funding abortion overseas.
- Trump signed executive orders protecting the conscience rights of doctors as well as the religious liberty of groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor from being coerced into participating or directly contributing to the destruction of innocent life.
- As a candidate for re-election, Trump has pledged to protect the right of states to regulate and limit (even ban) abortion if the voters in those states choose to do so.
Roe is no longer the law of the land. Abortion policy is, for now, largely being debated in individual states.
As a result, 22 states now ban or have limited abortion. Ten states feature ballot measures seeking to expand or legalize abortion for any reason this November.
But (you knew it was coming)…
When pressed by hostile media, Trump and Vance have both said they will not seek to “ban” abortion at the federal level. Of course, no such ban has been proposed, nor is any such “ban” likely to be approved by the Congress or U.S. Senate anytime soon.
Further, Trump and Vance have signaled they will not seek to prohibit IVF or limit access to abortion drugs which now account for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States. This despite the illegal approval of these drugs and their manifest harm to countless women.
Catholic social teaching calls for the legal protection of all human life, including the unborn. Yet Trump and Vance’s position represents a political balancing act rather than a full embrace of Catholic teaching on abortion.
The media would like nothing more than to be talking about federal bans on abortion, however remote a possibility they might be. It’s the central issue for Kamala Harris, who has promised to impose unlimited abortion – including late term abortion – on the entire country.
Kamala Harris and the media know the public has been deliberately deceived, believing that any restriction on abortion is a ban on all abortions, creating a wave of pro-life losses in several states.
Here’s what I wish Trump or Vance would say (or should have said) to the media:
All life is sacred and worthy of protection. But the country is divided. And there is no consensus across all 50 states on what should be done. The U.S. Congress and the Senate will not pass a ban on abortion anytime soon. Everybody knows that.
Meanwhile, Democrats have failed the country on nearly every issue. So they have made extreme abortion their central campaign promise – including gruesome late term abortion.
What we should be talking about is how we can help women thrive and flourish — including helping them with the challenges of starting a family and having children.
We need to start celebrating mothers, and the heroic role they play in our country. And we should work to protect women coerced into abortion against their will by predatory men, sex traffickers, and abusers.
There will always be a federal role for abortion policy, but for now, my administration is committed to helping as many as women as possible keep their children.
So let’s stop playing politics with women’s lives and start talking about real solutions.
It’s time to speak plainly.
There’s a fundamental moral difference between tolerating an existing evil – like dangerous birth control chemicals, abortion drugs, or IVF (which are currently legal) – and actively pursuing new laws to expand abortion and overturning state laws protecting women and children.
Trump and Vance need to speak clearly about the need to build a culture of life, while making clear that they are committed to doing what is possible to help women and protect children – given the political realities of the moment. Running away from the life issue is not only unacceptable – it’s also dumb politics.
They’re going to need pro-life voters like us to win.
So, are we merely choosing between two evils?
No.
>>> We are choosing between one presidential ticket that will preserve the right of states to protect women and children vs. the alternative that has promised to use the nuclear option, destroy the filibuster, and impose abortion on every state in the country.
>>> We are choosing between one presidential ticket that will restrict taxpayer abortion funding overseas vs. the alternative that will spend hundreds of millions of our dollars on killing children around the world.
>>> We are choosing between one presidential ticket that, regrettably, is willing to tolerate existing federal policies that harm women and destroy innocent life vs. the alternative that will dramatically expand these same policies, ending all reasonable regulations, and forcing taxpayers to fund them.
>>> We are choosing between the prospect of an administration that will be filled with pro-life personnel committed to finding ways to protect life and conscience, including the appointment of conservative judges vs. the alternative that will not include a single pro-life voice and will work every day to enable the destruction of countless lives.
One final thought…
Abortion is an issue because we have accepted the lie that the human person is a disposable commodity. Why is that? We’ve allowed government bureaucrats, together with big corporations, including big drug companies, to industrialize and dehumanize us.
A big reason there is no consensus on abortion is that America is anxiety ridden, unhappy, and unhealthy.
Now ask yourself:
Which presidential ticket is most likely to help break up this system upon which abortion rests?
The answer is obvious.