The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Trump makes right call: Leave abortion laws to states
Former President Donald Trump is under fire from some in the pro-life 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 in a Truth Social video. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
I get the disappointment. But Trump is right.
Let’s start with the reason we can restrict abortion at all: Trump is the only pro-life president in six decades with a perfect record in Supreme Court appointments. The decisive conservative majority he created overturned Roe v. Wade, the seemingly impossible goal of the antiabortion movement for nearly half a century. No president more openly embraced the pro-life movement, or delivered it more victories, than Trump.
He is being honest with pro-life voters: Passing a 15-week federal abortion ban is not possible in Congress anytime soon. So campaigning on a federal abortion limit would be an empty promise to pro-life Americans.
That has not stopped Democrats from demagoguing the issue. President Joe Biden claims “Trump will ban abortion nationwide.” That is a lie. By leaving abortion to the states, Trump takes this dishonest argument away from Democrats.
Indeed, by taking a federal abortion ban off the table, Republicans can make clear that Democrats are the abortion extremists. The Democratic Party used to treat abortion as a necessary evil, 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 focus the debate on the Democrats’ radical position.
Trump is setting the pro-life movement up for victory in the long term. For decades, conservatives assured the American people that overturning Roe would not ban abortion but send the issue back to the states. Voters now see many of those same conservatives saying they want to federalize the issue after all.
Polls show most Americans want to keep abortion legal. But 66% support placing limits, 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 due to concerns about GOP overreach.
The best way to bring those numbers up is keeping the debate in the states, meaning 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.
Indeed, if Democrats succeed in using the threat of a federal abortion ban to keep control of the Senate in November, then the pro-life cause could suffer an irreparable blow. With Sens. Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema retiring, Democrats likely would finally have the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster and codify Roe with a simple majority if they flip the House and Biden is reelected. From that point on, abortion policy would swing from one extreme to another depending on who controlled Congress and the presidency.
“At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” Trump correctly said. And the best way to persuade people to support the cause of life is to leave abortion decisions with the states.