Anti-abortion activists like Trump again
When Donald Trump did not back a national abortion ban, the leader of one of the country’s largest anti-abortion groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, blasted his position as “morally indefensible.”
The president of another leading anti-abortion organization, Students for Life, took a stand months later after Trump called strict state bans “terrible” — deploying volunteers to a Trump rally in Miami with signs that read “Make Trump Pro-Life Again.” That was last year.
Now, with voting set to begin in a Republican presidential race that many expect will soon coronate Trump as the presumptive nominee, those two prominent activists and other leading antiabortion figures have largely put their criticisms aside — focusing instead on what a second Trump presidency could mean for the anti-abortion movement.
“Is he the most pro-life person? No,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said in a recent interview. “But he keeps his deals.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who had issued the searing critique of Trump’s abortion ban skepticism last spring, told The Washington Post in recent days that Trump has “built an enormous amount of trust with pro-life voters, as his presidency was the most consequential in American history for the pro-life cause.”
Many anti-abortion activists spent much of last year frustrated because the former president, who appointed the three conservative justices who brought down Roe v. Wade, seemed to be tempering his support for their cause as he plotted his White House comeback amid a wave of support for abortion rights at the polls. They watched anxiously as Trump refused to endorse any kind of national abortion ban, privately telling those close to him that the “a-word,” as he called abortion, was a political loser.
But in recent interviews and statements, leading anti-abortion advocates are looking past what they characterize as purely political rhetoric — and plotting actions they believe a Trump administration would take as early as next year to crack down on abortion.
Leading advocates are concentrating on refining recommendations for two agencies with enormous power over abortion-related policies nationwide — the Justice and Health and Human Services departments — such as revisiting the 2000 approval of a key abortion drug and halting the mailing of abortion pills, according to a document published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The Food and Drug Administration, which approves drugs and has the power to take them off the market, operates under HHS.
Roger Severino, who led several anti-abortion efforts at HHS under Trump, said the movement is more focused on potential agency actions than passing a national abortion ban, which leaders privately acknowledge is extremely unlikely to make it through a divided Congress.
For those reasons, the conversation over when in pregnancy to ban abortion nationally is “almost beside the point,” Severino said, emphasizing he does not speak for Trump or any Republican campaign. “I don’t see his previous statements as limiting [Trump’s] ability to be a strong pro-life president.”
Trump’s campaign has assured some conservative leaders in private meetings the former president only criticized strict state abortion laws as a means of attacking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of his opponents in the Republican primary who signed a six-week ban, according to a Trump adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
DeSantis, asked during a CNN town hall Thursday night if Trump was “not pro-life,” pointed to his criticisms of state bans and responded flatly, “of course not.” He accused Trump of shifting his position, adding, “How do you flip-flop on something like the sanctity of life?”
In a written statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not address the former president’s recent comments on abortion, pointing instead to his record in the White House.