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The national Republican Party and the Trump campaign are reportedly abandoning their previous pro-life platforms and many pro-lifers are feeling betrayed. But not me, and here’s why.
For nearly half a century pro-lifers had a single focus: overturn Roe v Wade. And that focus gave energy and clarity to everything pro-lifers did, from marches on the Capital to praying on sidewalks.
The efforts and focus of pro-life forces for those nearly fifty years were well-placed. The only recourse to Roe, a decision which led to an estimated one million abortions every year for fifty years, could only be a different decision by the same court. And that could only happen with a change in the composition of the court.
Such a change depended on a president who would appoint pro-life justices and a pro-life senate to confirm those appointments. So, in the face of Roe, the only power pro-lifers had, other than to keep the issue in the public eye, was to keep the political pressure turned up on electing pro-life presidents and members of the senate.
It took fifty years, but finally all the stars aligned after Donald Trump was elected president and three seats opened up on the Supreme Court bench. Fortunately, for pro-lifers, there was a Republican majority in the senate to confirm those appointments, but even so, the confirmation hearings were heated, vicious, personal, and partisan.
The pro-aborts knew what was coming. Candidate Trump had promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe if he had the opportunity to do so, and he had the opportunity upon the deaths of Justices Atonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the retirement of Anthony Kennedy.
Two years after the appointment of the third justice, Amy Coney Barrett, the Court voted 6-3 in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, finding that there was no constitutional right to an abortion and Roe was overturned.
Dobbs did not outlaw abortion. The reversal of Roe simply gave the decision back to the states where even pro-aborts like Justice Ginsburg believed it belonged all along.
At this point, pro-lifers should have changed their focus from the national stage to the local stage and used the same focus and energy to effect the legislation that the Dobbs decision afforded. And some did - as evidenced by the flurry of anti-abortion legislation in some states.
Meanwhile, though, it appears national pro-life organizations, accustomed to fighting on the national stage for fifty years, suddenly didn’t know what to do with themselves and turned their attention to a whole slew of other agenda items.
To name a few: opposition to the public funding of abortion, opposition to the public funding of Planned Parenthood, opposition to the sale of fetal tissue and fetal body parts, opposition to federal subsidies for healthcare which includes abortion coverage, and support for a human life amendment to the Constitution.
All of these are good and none of them are new. But what’s new is the lack of singular focus that opposition to Roe had provided, and what is left is a list of 27 agenda items national pro-life organizations want the GOP and the Trump campaign to commit to with the same singularity of focus as if Roe was still the law of the land.
And that’s not going to happen. While Trump has often expressed his belief that unborn life is sacred, he wasn’t coming at it with the religious crusader fervor of most pro-life Christians.From what I can tell, Trump simply believed that Roe was bad law and that its imposition on the American people for 50 years was tyranny. Trump’s remedy was to get rid of a bad law and return the decision to the states and to the people who live in those states. Indeed, he never promised to do more than that.
One disgruntled pro-life columnist, lamenting the removal of the 27 agenda items from the GOP platform, wrote: “This comprehensive list has been replaced by a generic statement: ‘We proudly stand for families and life,’ and an ambiguous reference to the Fourteenth Amendment, which, under current jurisprudence, does not recognize the legal personhood of the unborn.”
My recommendation is for these national pro-lifers to get out of “D.C.,” get home, and get to work. Like never before, the door is open to legislatively protect human life in all its stages: “from conception to natural death.” And we don’t need a party or a president to do it.
Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com
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