The latest brouhaha over abortion and Donald Trump has once again revealed that too many conservatives simply don’t understand how politics works. I am as anti-abortion as anyone in America, but the tactics of the pro-life movement lately are like charging into battle outnumbered, on unfavorable terrain, with subpar weapons, counting their own sense of moral superiority to deliver victory.
The controversy began when Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration would be great for “women and their reproductive rights”. He went on to say he would veto a national abortion ban if it ever arrived at his desk. Anti-abortion activist Lila Rose responded on Twitter, saying “If you don’t stand for pro-life principles, you don’t get pro-life votes.”
This sparked a firestorm on social media, with pro-Trump conservatives accusing Rose and her allies of grifting off the pro-life cause, bringing up her six figure salary at Live Action. Abortion abolitionists shot back, reiterating that a Republican party and candidate who refuses to call for a national abortion ban does not deserve their votes.
While I personally give Rose and her allies the benefit of the doubt as far as their sincerity, I will say that the pro-life movement seems to value words over action. Donald Trump delivered what they had been demanding for 49 years — overturning Roe v. Wade — but leaders of the movement are ready to discard him for saying the wrong thing now.
This illustrates the definitional problem of single issue voters. No matter how important that issue is (and ending abortion really is one of the most important!), it is easy to assume that your cause is the central animating force in the broader movement. The pro-life movement has long served as a source of money and votes for Republican candidates who say the right things, but it has never been the biggest driver of the party.
The inherent problem with the pro-life movement is in how it was content to continue fighting impotently for decades, but the moment it got the very victory it claimed it wanted all along, it began falling apart. Overturning Roe v. Wade was the unifying goal of the movement, and now that it’s been accomplished, the movement doesn’t know what to do with itself. It’s the dog that finally caught the car.
Compounding that is the fact that many within the pro-life movement fail to recognize that we are losing ground, not gaining. Kansas and Ohio, two solid red Republican states, both recently voted to protect the right to abortion by large margins.
Many pro-life leaders, especially of the older generations, are afraid of the truth. They will handwave those results away and continue to claim that most Americans want to ban abortion at all levels. Many of these leaders continue to insist that no woman would ever willingly murder her own unborn child, no matter how often leftist women shout their abortions on social media. This leads to significant errors in strategy, as pro-life activists look for external causes of abortion rather than addressing the depravity of the human heart. Or, as Peachy Keenan put it on Twitter, “If women want to kill their own children, there is no elected official on earth who can change their hearts.”
The pro-life movement is a product of the old Republican Party, where conservative Christian voters were milked for cash and votes on the promise of ending abortion. That never happened, but in the meantime the party led our country into endless foreign wars, free trade that outsourced the good jobs and manufacturing industry that were once the backbone of our economy, and open borders.
Donald Trump put a stop to all of that, and in the process he solved the seemingly Sisyphean task of actually doing something about abortion as well. The neoconservative establishment could not forgive him for the former, and the pro-life movement is willing to condemn him despite the latter.
What people like Lila Rose miss is that we have a binary choice in front of us. We are not going to the polls to pick between Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and a third candidate who is the Platonic ideal of a pro-life politician. No, our choice is Trump or Harris. One appointed the three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, the other had mobile abortion vans at her convention. It should be an easy choice.
Republican voters are concerned about the economy, illegal immigration, crime, and foreign wars. Democratic voters, especially Democratic women, are overwhelmingly concerned about one thing: abortion. Putting abortion on the national ballot is the surest way to lose a national election.
Given the choice, then, between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which should a principled pro-life voter select?
First, you must accept that voting is not a sacred act akin to marriage. Voting for a candidate does not mean endorsing every single thing that candidate has ever said or done. Voting is a tactical decision regarding the direction of our Republic, nothing more, nothing less.
Second, you must consider the alternative. As I said, there is no mythical pure pro-life candidate waiting in the wings. If Kamala Harris becomes our next president, we will most likely see Roe return as federal law, and if the Supreme Court disagrees, the Democrats will simply pack the court. On the other hand, a second Trump term buys us time to take back our culture from the dystopian malaise that has conquered it. A Trump term creates space to fight for liberty, space that will not exist under the Democrats.
Peachy Keenan responded to Lila Rose, explaining what the alternative to Donald Trump looks like:
Kamala Harris will usher in the end of representative democracy and its replacement by elite communist rule. A President Kamala will continue foreign waters and start new ones, endangering all our lives. She will crater the economy, leading to widespread and deep poverty for families with children. She will champion the transgender agenda that seeks to mutilate and sterilize thousands of new victims. She will do nothing to stop the border invasion or crime wave. Food shortages are a real possibility. This is not a difficult choice.
If the pro-life activists continue to ankle bite and campaign against our only bulwark against this looming abyss, then I will have to rethink my support for the movement. There is zero daylight between us when it comes to the immorality of abortion, but I am not willing to sacrifice my children’s future and my nation on this hill.
Some pro-life activists have adopted an accelerationist viewpoint, believing that a Trump loss this year will lead the Republican Party to do some serious soul searching that will result in a renewed appreciation for the pro-life cause. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Trump loses by a few thousand votes in a handful of swing states, then Republicans will blame Lila Rose and her allies for that loss. America might not survive another four years of Democratic rule, and supposedly principled pro-life activists would shoulder some of the blame. The most likely outcome would not be putting the pro-life movement back in the driver’s seat, but the complete and total destruction of the movement for generations to come.
Finally, as a voter you must grasp the reality of political power. Prior to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, most Americans opposed gay marriage. It was defeated every time it appeared on a ballot, even in deep blue California. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton felt compelled to proclaim that marriage was between a man and a woman during their 2008 primary debates.
Fast forward to today: A majority of Americans, even Republicans, support gay marriage.
Why? Because most people go with the flow. Whatever is enshrined in law, whatever is considered high status, that is what guides most people’s political positions. I would love a federal ban on abortion, but it is not going to come about by fighting for it on the current battlefield. We must win before we can enact policy, but running on a national abortion ban in our current culture is a surefire way to lose.
The biggest success of the pro-life movement came through the practical application of political power. Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan all promised to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, but it took Donald Trump to actually do it. Recall that when Democrats and liberal Republicans demanded that Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett swear allegiance to the “settled law” of abortion, they all dutifully complied. Yet once on the Supreme Court, they wasted no time before overturning it.
I’m not saying lie, rather I’m saying we need to win first then enact policy. That means meeting voters where they are, addressing their concerns, and turning out your base, while diminishing the impact of your opponent’s base. The pro-life strategy of trying to convince Trump voters to stay home is like shooting your own troops the night before a battle.
Auron MacIntyre explained it well:
The art of politics is the art of acquiring power
Every victory should make the next victory easier
Once you have enough power to control institutions you can enact your agenda as you see fit
Leftists understand this. Joe Biden didn’t campaign on open borders, but he essentially opened the southern border mere moments after his inauguration. Barack Obama didn’t campaign on gay marriage and DEI, but he worked to implement both once in office.
A Harris administration will not only impose abortion on the nation, it will continue the endless foreign wars that sap our best and brightest, keep open the borders and encourage the replacement of our citizens, and expand the horrific assault on our children in the form of transgenderism.
I hope your principled refusal to vote will be worth it.
On the other hand, a Trump administration gives us room to fight. We can end the foreign wars, close the border and stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl, protect our children from the irreversible damage of the transgender ideology, and fight to ban abortion wherever possible. The results in Kansas and Ohio show that our culture is not nearly as pro-life as it needs to be, which is why we need to take back our culture.
The choice before us this year is not simply between two people, but between two entirely different systems of governance. Kamala Harris promises to cement the technocratic oligarchy that has choked our Republic like weeds for the past century. This oligarchy can be summed up by the prediction of the World Economic Forum that we will own nothing and be happy. The government will ensure we have pods to live in, bug paste to eat, and endless distractions to keep us entertained, so long as we don’t rock the boat.
Is Donald Trump perfect? Of course not. But rather than trying to see all our ideal policies borne out in the man, look at the movement he is leading. Trump presents an alternative to Harris’ brand of globalist totalitarian technocracy, one that remembers the America we once knew and loved. Like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, Trump saw a vision for a bigger, better, and more prosperous America, which is why modern industrialists like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have declared their support for him and his movement. They correctly recognize that we face a choice between soulless totalitarianism and a return to the American dream of exploration and advancement.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have declared their support for Donald Trump because they know it is the only way to stop endless wars and reverse the epidemic of chronic diseases that has taken hold of the American people.
The MAGA movement is a coalition of people who believe in America, recognize the greatness of the American people, and are committed to advancing upward and onward while upholding the dignity of human life. While not everyone in this movement agrees on every policy, it provides a platform to advocate for the issues we hold most dear. For those of us who believe that abortion is wrong and equate it with murder, this movement offers a space to make our case, to pass state laws where possible, and to foster a culture that values life rather than seeing it as disposable.
To quote Peachy Keenan once more:
You want to fight for a federal ban on abortion? That’s fine, I’d love that too. But you might want to start that process only AFTER you have FIRST successfully helped transform our current culture of depravity and death, restored marriage, crushed third-wave feminism, and elevated the status of mothers to high rank.
Only then will any type of ban be possible, politically and culturally.
Until then, all talk of it is pure folly and mental masturbation.
To achieve this cultural transformation, we must see things as they are, not as we wish them to be. There is no purely pro-life candidate on the ballot, and the national electorate does not support an abortion ban. The same Supreme Court that overturned Roe might even overturn such a ban if it were to pass. Accepting this reality is liberating, as it allows us to make genuine progress in our cultural battle rather than merely pontificating from ivory towers.
Lafayette Lee wrote a fantastic essay for IM1776 recently about the nature of our battle. He closed with this:
If we want to have any say over our circumstances — if we wish to decide the future — we ought to cast aside our quarrels with fate and embrace the battleground as it stands.
Right now, we need room to win back our culture. To do that means electing Donald Trump. Everything else comes after.
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