Why Trump is right about leaving abortion to states
Donald Trump is under fire from some in the prolife movement for his decision to oppose a federal abortion limit, declaring instead that abortion should be left to states. We “took (abortion) out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds and vote of the people in each state,” Trump said Monday in a Truth Social video. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
As a pro-life conservative, I get the disappointment. But Trump is right.
Let’s start with the reason we can restrict abortion at all today: Trump is the only pro-life president in six decades with a perfect record in Supreme Court appointments. The decisive 6-to-3 conservative majority he created overturned Roe v. Wade, the seemingly impossible goal of the antiabortion movement for nearly 50 years.
As president, he defunded the U.N. Population Fund over its support for abortion in China; allowed states to withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood; and implemented the Protect Life Rule prohibiting Title X family-planning funds from going to clinics that perform abortions. And he was the first president to speak in person at the March for Life.
And he is being honest with pro-life voters: Passing a 15-week federal abortion ban is not possible anytime soon.
That’s because doing so requires 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, and there is zero chance Republicans will win that kind of majority in the next four years. So campaigning on a federal abortion limit would be an empty promise.
That has not stopped Democrats from demagoguing the issue. President Biden has warned that “Trump will ban abortion nationwide.” Biden served for decades in the Senate, so he knows that is a lie. By leaving abortion to the states, Trump takes this dishonest argument away.
Indeed, by taking a federal abortion ban off the table, Trump is positioning Republicans to make clear that Democrats are the abortion extremists. The Democratic Party used to treat abortion as a necessary evil that should be “safe, legal and rare,” but today it is something to be celebrated. The new Democratic consensus that taxpayer-funded abortion should be permitted up to the moment of birth is a position supported by less than onethird of Americans. Republicans can now go on offense and focus the debate on the Democrats’ radical position.
Finally, Trump is setting the pro-life movement up for victory in the long-term battle for hearts and minds. For decades, conservatives assured the American people that overturning Roe would not ban abortion but simply send the issue back to the states. Voters now see many of those same conservatives saying they want to federalize the issue after all. They feel misled.
The pro-life movement needs to meet Americans where they are — not where we wish they were — on abortion. Polls show that most want to keep abortion legal. But 66% support placing limits on abortion, according to a Knights of Columbus-Marist poll in January. What should those limits be? The good news is that 58% support limiting abortions to the first three months of pregnancy or less. The bad news is that is down from 69% a year earlier. Support for restricting abortion has slipped as Americans have grown concerned about Republican overreach.
The best way to bring those numbers back up is keeping the debate in the states, our laboratories of democracy. When abortion is decided at the state level, far more Americans end up with the abortion policy they want.
Red states will get stricter abortion policies, blue states will have the opposite, and voters in purple states will demand a middle ground. And even at the state level, the pro-life movement should focus on incremental change. If pro-lifers push too far too fast, they will end up electing more pro-abortion Democrats who will take us in the opposite direction.
If Democrats succeed in using the threat of a federal abortion ban to keep control of the Senate in November, then the prolife cause could suffer an irreparable blow.