Donald J. Trump’s ongoing betrayal of the pro-life movement has ignited a fierce debate on the right. While some pro-life leaders are calling on the Trump-Vance campaign to reverse course, MAGA activists are responding with fury, demanding that pro-lifers shut up and get in line. In their view, pro-lifers should be eternally grateful that Trump kept his promises to the pro-life movement during his first administration and should now refrain from noticing that he has become a pro-choice candidate.
This view is wrong and strategically suicidal for the pro-life movement. There is too much at stake for pro-life leaders to remain silent now. In fact, the short time left between now and Election Day is the best—and perhaps only—opportunity to influence Trump’s abortion policies. With tight margins in many key states, Trump needs the support of social conservatives right now—and he needs to be reminded of that.
Trump’s pivot is obvious to anyone but the most committed personality cultist. On April 8, he released a video staking out a federalist position on abortion, but he has since consistently condemned states with pro-life protections, echoing Planned Parenthood language by calling them “harsh” and “extreme.” As I previously reported in First Things, he stripped the pro-life plank affirming the right to life of the unborn out of the GOP platform, railroading pro-life allies to do so. For the first time since 1984, the Republican Party is no longer explicitly pro-life, including only a condemnation of late-term abortion—alongside a proactive declaration of support for IVF.
Following the abortion-themed Democratic Convention, Trump chose to announce on August 23 that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” a euphemism for abortion. On August 25, JD Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump would veto a national abortion ban if it came across his desk. On August 29, Trump announced that “under the Trump administration, your government will pay for or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment.” This is a commitment to expand the Culture of Death and would result in the deaths of thousands of embryonic humans.
Many pro-life leaders are banking on the hope that a re-elected Trump would govern like he did last time—but most of those around Trump who influenced him for the better are gone. Vice President Mike Pence was the movement’s man in the White House, and constantly pushed pro-life priorities to a president who was always personally pro-choice (as his son Eric Trump explicitly confirmed in a recent interview). Pence and other pro-life influences are gone. Trump himself has been telling those around him that he will be a very different president if re-elected.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a pro-choice Democrat who will be on the transition team with (also pro-choice) Tulsi Gabbard if Trump wins, noted that he will assist in “picking who will govern” and that “people are going to see a very different President Trump than they did in the last term. . . . He’s said many interesting things to me about what he did wrong the last time.” Specifically, RFK Jr. noted, Trump regretted those he had surrounded himself with previously. “He said, ‘They’re always bringing this up to me and telling me I’m for Project 2025. I never read [it] until they started accusing me of it. That was written by a right-wing asshole,’ is what he said to me . . . he’s listening to a wider range of voices.”
That “range of voices” has narrowed, and pro-life leaders have found themselves out in the cold. I have long worried, for example, that Trump might weigh in on the abortion side of the upcoming referendums—which, on August 29, he did. An NBC reporter asked Trump about Amendment 4, the “Right to Abortion Initiative” on the November ballot in Florida. “I think the six-week [ban] is too short,” Trump replied. “There has to be more time. I’ve told them that I want more weeks. . . . I’m going to be voting that we leave more than six weeks.”
Amendment 4 would enshrine abortion until birth into the Florida Constitution. It reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” The amendment needs 60 percent to pass, and the gap had closed in recent weeks, with the pro-life movement pushing public support to several percentage points below the threshold. Thousands of unborn lives are on the line, and with a few notable exceptions, pro-life leaders pushed back hard, calling on Trump to reverse course.
Pro-life pressure worked. On August 30, Trump changed his mind, reiterating in an interview with FOX News that he still opposes a six-week ban, but would be voting against Amendment 4. “The Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the ninth month,” he said. “You know, some of the states like Minnesota have it where you can actually execute the baby after birth, and all of that stuff is unacceptable. So I’ll be voting no for that reason.” Both internal sources and press reports indicate that Trump retracted his previous statement due to the backlash—highlighting just how essential it is for pro-life leaders to speak up now.
Pro-lifers recognize that a Harris-Walz administration would be horrific; most also recognize that if the new pro-choice GOP becomes permanent, the American pro-life movement could find itself in the same situation as pro-lifers in Canada and the U.K., where no major party is willing to defend pre-born human rights. Both scenarios would be a disaster, and reasonable people can disagree in good faith on the best strategic way forward. What is not in question is that all available leverage should be used now, and that the MAGA activists insisting on blind loyalty must be ignored.
As JD Vance said in 2022: “If you’re not willing to stand up to the left on abortion, you can’t be trusted on anything else. The pro-life position is the pro-people position and I’m proud to be 100% pro-life.” Some of us still believe that.
Jonathon Van Maren is the author of Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement.
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