Just before the 2016 presidential campaigns began, my pro-life/whole-life manifesto “The Race to Save Our Century” was published. It warns that we live in extraordinary times, and that the lives of countless millions depend on how we shape the age we live in. When Donald Trump announced he was running for president, I dismissed him with a laugh. I’m a proud, lifelong Republican. He was a lifelong, “pro-choice”, New York City Democrat, I thought, and had even spoken in support of partial-birth abortion in past interviews. His newfound anti-Leftist rhetoric was crass, unpersuasive, and sometimes even cruelly missed the mark, unjustly painting innocents like refugees and illegal workers in a bad light. These were extraordinary times, and I wanted an extraordinary leader. Trump was no extraordinary man. He was a man on the low end of ordinary. I opposed him in the primaries. When he won the GOP nomination, I refused to endorse him publicly. In the end, deeply disappointed, I privately cast my vote for Trump. Thank God for Ordinary Men like Trump! But when I watched President Trump speak at the 2019 State of the Union address this week, all I could think was “Thank God for ordinary men like Donald Trump!” President Trump sounded more like the teamsters I train with at the boxing gym than like an iconic statesman when he described how “lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” He went on:
These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world. And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth.
To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.
Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.
And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God.
And as this ordinary man plainly stated what a late-term abortion is and why it’s hateful, ABC New’s lead camera panned into the audience, to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who wore an expression I’ll never forget. The look on Schumer’s face could be described as … extraordinary. Or perhaps more accurately: abnormal. Who Are These Late-Term Abortion Supporters? Practically Nobody, That’s Who. The whole world suffers from the onslaughts of another kind of extraordinariness: The dark, baffling, furious will of the small, bitter, but disproportionately influential minority that serves the interests of the abortion industry. That’s the extraordinariness I saw when Chuck Schumer grinned at the mention of partial birth abortion. It was present also in the Democratic congresswomen, all dressed in white, who glowered and shook their heads at the suggestion of prohibiting the killing of children born alive. Gallup polling from 2018 showed that 81 percent of Americans think abortions during the third trimester should be illegal. A Marist poll released just this year shows that 75 percent of Americans say abortion should be illegal after the first trimester. This includes most who identify as independents (78) and even a majority of Democrats (60 percent). What’s extraordinary is that politicians in any party–normally so shrewd and careful about their election prospects–would relish and embrace something as revolting to ordinary people as late-term abortion, to say nothing of infanticide. There is no natural explanation for such bizarre behavior on the part of some Democratic leaders. Trump Didn’t “Convert” to Pro-Life: He was Freed President Trump is no pro-life convert. He’s an ordinary man, and like most ordinary people, he knows–and has always known deep down–that the abortion regime in this country is an evil to be opposed, not a cause to be celebrated. All of us ordinary people have temptations–things that offer themselves as methods of passing our life away, distracted from the important work of “saving our century.” It’s hard to stay focused, and to take seriously our duty to influence our age, rather than passively allow our age to shape us. Thanks to the hard work of his immigrant family, Donald Trump was raised in a sea of distractions. For decades, he played the role of playboy, tycoon, and harmless reality TV star. Part of the role was to bow to the gods of the city–the gods of hedonism, of womanizing, and yes, even of abortion. But when he found himself on the threshold of real influence over that city, he began to feel free. And he responded to the great excesses and evils of the abortion industry like the ordinary man he truly is: The same way a majority of ordinary people–both Democrats and Republicans–responded to Gallup polling on late-term abortion last year. I was looking for a great and heroic candidate in 2016. One who could take seriously and bravely face down what I saw as the blackest clouds to gather over our world since the great genocides and democides of the 20th Century. But it took an ordinary man to look at the extraordinary evil of progressive ideology, and to respond not with sophisticated proofs and counterarguments, but with plain, human revulsion, and a commoner’s invocation of God. It took an ordinary man to look at the vast, black clouds of the abortion industry’s amassed powers and principalities, and to call them what they are: Flatly, obviously, universally contemptible. Thinking back to my initial suspicions of Trump, I wonder if I was half-right. Maybe he was just a New York City Democrat. Well in that case, Trump is the first Democrat I ever voted for. But if other Democrats were true to themselves, and true to the ordinary people they represent, Trump could be the first of many.]]>