‘Pro-life’ Evangelicals have sold out to Trump’s pro-abortion policies
The decades-long battle against the abortion holocaust was supposedly over when the Supreme Court ruled to “overturn” Roe v. Wade, but instead of using it to motivate and equip the church and the pro-life movement for the abortion battles yet to come, America’s “pro-life” Evangelicals have decided to sell out to Donald Trump’s pro-abortion policies.
Additionally, some of these so-called pro-life leaders believe that unless you sell out too, you will be guilty of committing a “greater evil” by rejecting Trump and the Republican Party platform (via Christ Over All):
Can evangelicals in good conscience vote for the Republican platform since it has removed the pro-life plank? While there are other morally permissible options, I believe an evangelical can and even should still vote for Trump in good conscience, because the platform change is not pro-abortion, and the opposing party is literally setting up abortion and vasectomy to-go mobiles outside their convention hall. Furthermore, there is still only one ticket who would not sign a federal abortion bill if/when it is brought to their desk, and that is the Trump ticket. So, while Trump may veto a national abortion ban, he will also veto any national abortion law congress puts on his desk. (Emphasis mine)
Are we supposed to believe that the same guy who promised to build a wall but didn’t; promised to repeal Obamacare but didn’t; promised to defund Planned Parenthood but didn’t; will keep his promise to protect the unborn?
The writer then falls back on the “lesser of two evils” defense of selling out to Trump:
I am saddened that I will effectively be voting for Trump/Vance to hold the turf gained in the demolition of Roe, as opposed to casting my vote for the explicit advance toward the abolition of abortion at the federal level. But, given the option of maintaining ground vs. losing ground on this crucial issue, I am fully convinced the former is the easy and common-sense choice. As Erik Reed has said well, “Trump may allow abortion rights to gain an inch if he softens on the pro-life issue, but I believe if Harris wins, she intends to take a mile.” As someone who desires to see the lives of as many babies spared as possible over the next four years in America, while wanting this country to be in the best possible position to see abortion outlawed down the road, this is an easy call. (Emphasis mine)
Trump will allow abortion rights to expand, just not as much as Harris? That’s called incrementalism: the feel-good but failed belief that murdering a few babies is better than murdering a lot of them.
However, it’s a bald-faced lie to believe that “turf [was] gained in the demolition of Roe.” Despite Trump’s so-called victory over abortion, the holocaust has not only continued, but it has also returned to levels not seen in years. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported earlier this year that an estimated 1,026,690 abortions were reported in the formal health care system in 2023, resulting in the highest number measured in the United States in more than a decade.
In the first three months of 2024, an average of 98,990 abortions were performed per month, according to a study by the pro-choice Society of Family Planning (SFP), compared to 84,000 per month in the two months before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022.
Telehealth services — by which doctors remotely prescribe patients abortion pills — are used in 20 percent of U.S. abortions. Before Roe was overturned, only 5 percent of U.S. abortions were administered via telehealth. In states that have restricted access to abortion, chemical abortions are convenient, cheap, and rising in popularity; chemical abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, up 10 percent since 2020.
When Donald Trump, who touts himself as the “most pro-life president ever,” called Florida’s six-week abortion ban a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake” last year, many called him out for his failure to defend the unborn. But not Dr. Robert Jeffress. This founding member of The Fellowship of the Pharisees showed that he was more than willing to sacrifice a few unborn babies on the altar of Trumpism when he defended Trump’s pro-abortion rhetoric.
Trump, Jeffress insisted at the time, was still “very pro-life” but was simply “pointing out a political reality” — namely, the unpopularity of abortion bans and the challenge of passing a federal ban. “If there’s going to be a national ban on abortion,” Jeffress said, “there’s going to be some sort of compromise or consensus for legislation to be enacted.”
When Jeffress was asked how this applied Trump’s criticism of Florida’s abortion ban as a “terrible thing,” he suggested that Trump’s remarks be viewed through the “prism of how we’re going to get a consensus.”
When I consider how so-called pro-life Evangelicals are defending Donald Trump’s pro-abortion rhetoric, I’m reminded of the words spoken many years ago by a man many considered a modern-day prophet, A.W. Tozer:
“Religion today is not transforming people: rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender.”
Though Tozer passed away over 60 years ago, his words still ring true because they provide an accurate description of today’s Evangelicals when it comes to supporting Donald Trump and his pro-abortion rhetoric.
I wrote before and after the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe that murdering unborn babies would continue because it was obvious to me that Donald Trump and the Republican Party were planning to use the decision to abandon the life issue in the name of political expediency. I wish I had been wrong, but what are the chances of that?
Under the banner of cheap grace, some “pro-life” Evangelicals are promoting the lie that abortion is simply too nuanced for the common man to understand, and that Christians are actually following God’s call by supporting a woman’s “right” to murder her baby before or after birth.
Jesus wept.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He is the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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