It’s doubtful that any contemporary political faction has been betrayed by its host party more often, or more publicly, than the anti-abortion movement.
The history of Republican presidents appointing Supreme Court justices — Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy — who uphold abortion rights is too uncanny to be accidental. There is simply nothing like it on the Democratic side.
So it’s been fascinating to watch activists grapple with the new abortion-rights candidacy of the anti-abortion president whose Supreme Court appointees scuttled Roe v. Wade, eliminating abortion rights for tens of millions of American women.
“My Administration,” candidate Donald Trump wrote on social media on Aug. 23, “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” The next day, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, told NBC News that Trump had said “explicitly” that as president he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one.
The abortion-rights barrage was only just beginning.
Trump followed up by declaring that as president, he would make in-vitro fertilization treatments — which are opposed by many anti-abortion activists — free for all Americans. Considering that the average IVF cycle of treatment costs more than $14,000, and many patients require multiple cycles, it was an enormously generous gesture on behalf of American taxpayers. Trump’s promise represented a bold new step into the political bounce house where the former president performs stunts on matters he doesn’t care about or understand, and then watches to see how adults react.
Trump’s campaign, like his life, is a farrago of lies. But in the past few weeks, his mendacity has reached a comic crescendo on the issue of abortion, with Trump slurring nonsense out of multiple twists of his mouth.
While promising IVF payments and “great” reproductive rights, Trump flip-flopped on an abortion amendment to Florida’s constitution, whipsawing between his abortion rights and anti-abortion rights poles in a matter of hours.
The anti-abortion movement, which has long cast itself as a moral crusade in the likeness of slavery abolitionism, made its bed with an amoral demagogue and now must navigate his lies along with everyone else. For the Republican leaders of Texas and others who view punitive anti-abortion policy as a good way to keep the womenfolk down, Trump’s jabberwocky is surely no cause for consternation. They trust him to dissemble today, deliver tomorrow.
But for less corrupt actors, it can’t be easy to cast your lot with the nation’s greatest paragon of moral degeneracy and simply hope for the best.
“There is a crucial conversation happening right now about protecting children and political strategy,” Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote on X, where she has more than 360,000 followers. “We are pro-life activists. What should our response be when Trump repeatedly takes step after step back from what it means to protect innocent preborn lives …? It is wrong for Trump supporters to demand that pro-life activists be endlessly loyal to Trump in response to repeated betrayal.”
Every powerful national social movement has included a few scoundrels in the ranks. But there is no corollary to the moral degradation that Trump supplies to every endeavor. Rose and others no doubt recognize the genuine risk that Trump’s amorality could taint what they insist is a moral movement, as it discolors everything it touches, for generations.
Political strategy of the moment suggests sticking with Trump and waiting for him, if victorious, to reward his base and betray anyone foolish enough to have believed his expedient support for abortion rights. But if the United States survives as a multi-racial democracy, it will do so by renouncing Trump and Trumpism.
The backlash to Trump’s assaults on democracy and decency could be severe. In that event, association with Trump will be a stain that lingers, a spot that credible successors try desperately to expunge. A lot of Trump-adjacent causes may get washed out in the cleansing. Will the anti-abortion movement be one?
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy.
