Vote or Die: Trump is Right on Abortion

To the pro-life movement: don’t tear down what took fifty years to accomplish.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) released its 2024 platform this week, which met the ire of pro-life conservatives because of its allegedly “watered down” language on abortion. The platform is, without question, a great document that will substantially advance the “American First” cause. To many pro-lifers, however, Trump’s “moderating” on the sanctity of life for electoral purposes represents a betrayal, despite Trump being the first president to attend the March for Life and delivering on appointing three pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, resulting in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Some pro-life activists have claimed they may stay home this election. However, staying home in protest is a crucial mistake and certainly is not an option for serious conservatives.

Some readers will be tempted to write this off as mere propaganda from a pro-Trump sycophant. That could not be further from the truth. Abortion is the issue that made me conservative. In high school, I was a pro-life apologist even while being a practical atheist and libertarian in other respects, and the principles that undergird the dignity of all human life led me to a complete shift in my worldview and lifestyle, something for which I am deeply grateful.

Most of this article will focus on the contemporary political issues at play, but we must start with the Catholic principles and moral considerations surrounding voting. The USCCB’s “Guide to Moral Duties Concerning Voting” lays out the moral theology behind the obligation to vote, voting in light of the common good, and mitigating circumstances regarding voting for immoral candidates. It draws on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, various Church fathers, papal encyclicals, and other teachings. In it, we learn that voting is a duty, that a commitment to the natural right to life is “non-negotiable,” and that we have a duty to vote for a worthy candidate. The guide states:

One may vote for an enemy of religion and morals in order to exclude an even greater enemy of religion, morals and liberty. Indeed, one can be seriously obliged to do so IF that candidate’s election is a foreseeable result of not voting to exclude election. (emphasis mine)

In other words, the pro-life movement must support Trump. He is certainly no enemy of religion and morals; he’s a friend, in fact. Earlier in the document, it states that not voting for a worthy candidate would be a venial sin, and potentially even a mortal sin if not voting “would result in the election of an unworthy candidate.” Perhaps in an instance with two unworthy candidates that does not apply, but the implication is clear: not voting is wrong. The lack of a decision is a part that can have significant, unintended consequences. This is especially true in the key swing states where the margins are likely to be razor thin and the marginal impact of not voting increases.

On the flip side, even if Biden was sincere when he said that he opposed late term abortion in the recent debate, (which is doubtful since Biden’s entire career has been promoting abortion and opposing pro-life justices), his party is rabidly pro-abortion up to and even after the point of birth. If anything, Trump’s pro-life supporters and political ecosystem will have an influence on his policies once he is elected, whereas Biden will go along with the most radical proposals of his party. It is shortsighted to confuse the pro-life battle for the next four years because of the rhetoric Trump and his allies will use in the next four months to get him elected. 

This is underscored further when we actually look at what the 2024 GOP platform says. Here is what is states in full on abortion:

Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life.

We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).

The platform affirms the right to life by appealing to the 14th Amendment. The reference is strategically ambiguous, an important move this election cycle. Yet, the 14th Amendment has been the basis of an argument pioneered by Josh Craddock, John Finnis, and Robert George (among others) that abortion should be banned nationwide as a violation of the natural right to life. Thus, an appeal to the 14th Amendment to support state’s rights is a bad reading (as Craddock himself pointed out), but one that allows multiple interpretations and opportunities in the next four years.

Hadley Arkes, my former boss, recently wrote on “[Stephen] Douglas’ side of the argument” in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Arkes knows — following Lincoln rather than Douglas — that the moral issue cannot be simply laid aside for the sake of political convenience. However, this is not what is happening this time. It is worth noting that Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska bill promoting popular sovereignty was brought to Congress in 1854; in 1854 Lincoln was a private lawyer after serving a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Instead, it was the lack of a sufficiently anti-slavery candidate in 1854 that launched Lincoln to the presidency. But it is a common adage that “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you don’t.” There is too much at stake for the country writ large to blow up the election over one issue, even if it is the important issue that abortion is. Lincoln understood the rationale. Arkes — arguably the most important thinker in the history of the pro-life movement — knows it too. Pro-lifers everywhere would do well to remember as well. 

As Lincoln joined the Republican Party and became a leading critic of slavery and archrival to Stephen Douglas, as well as the Southern Fire-Eaters, he still was very moderate in his stated positions. He repeatedly denied that he was for the social or political equality between blacks and whites during the Lincoln-Douglas debates because he knew that it would be disastrous to his electoral chances. In the 1860 presidential campaign, he knew that he needed the nativist vote to help him win the presidency, as well as the prohibitionists, even though he did not agree with either group or their views.

His position on dealing with slavery was not to touch the institution where it existed, but only to insist on the right of Congress to legislate on it in the territories, and he opposed Douglas’ “don’t care” attitude as well as the Dred Scott decision. Even with the Emancipation Proclamation, had any of the Southern states returned to Congress, slavery would have continued to exist there. Lincoln always insisted that slavery was wrong, and spent much of his career dedicated to the cause, but he was no crusader like the radical Republicans because crusading would have been counterproductive and dangerous.

I was very saddened by what happened in Kansas and Ohio on abortion in the 2022 midterms. These are temporary stumbling blocks, but in a government run on public opinion, you cannot be too far outside of the overton window and have any chance at success. Moreover, you cannot do any good if you are on the sidelines. Winning enables all subsequent rallying to your cause. Trump understands that America is a pro-choice country at-large and has reconciled himself to that fact for the sake of accomplishing other goals where his vision is genuinely attainable. 

Ultimately, pro-life abolitionism is imprudent. Voters may choose to be “one issue voters,” but statesmen do not have that luxury. A statesman has to look at all of the issues, see where he can make progress towards a goal, muster the political will to accomplish what can be done. A statesman is one who can prioritize, recognizing that not everything can be done at once. Being a statesman requires prudence, compromise, patience, boldness of vision, flexibility, and many other virtues. Citizens who can think more like statesmen will be better equipped to make tough calls in the political arena. 

This election is the most important election of our lifetime. The implications are much bigger than just abortion, which is missed if we myopically focus on the issue to the exclusion of all others, especially the threat of immigration and the lawfare against Catholics and others face in public life today.

There are certainly other things to discuss and debate where justice can be done while the pro-life movement continues to recalibrate itself. Staying home stays silent on all of those issues: immigration, trade, wars, building a better economy, and the weaponization of the Justice Department against the Regime’s political opponents–including pro-life advocates. We are still in “The Flight 93 Election,” and the “charge the cockpit or you die” condition still holds, perhaps more than it did in 2016. 

Abortion is evil. Abortion is incompatible with the Constitution properly conceived. Abortion needs to be put on the “path to ultimate extinction.” All of these things are true. But none of the “higher politics,” as Adrian Vermeule pointed out, of changing what is politically possible happens without making moves on the ground to enable oneself to do that.

Vermeule is of course right that our political imagination is deeply constrained under liberalism and that capitulating to the overton window is a form of defeatism. However, we are still in standard electoral politics for the moment; thinking beyond the current and preparing for it is something that can and must occur alongside participation in the decaying paradigm of “liberal democracy.”

The 2024 GOP platform does affirm a commitment to life. Sitting out of the 2024 election is imprudent. It is bad theology. It is historically illiterate. It is counterproductive. It suffers from myopia. To the pro-life movement: don’t tear down what took fifty years to accomplish.

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