The Don for and against Life

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

 

So Donald Trump decided to blame pro-lifers for the disappointing midterm results, in order to deflect blame that was falling on him, whether for his choice of candidates (Dr. Oz or Doug Mastriano) or his choice of issues to focus on: the stolen rigged election and how unfair it all was for him. This turn of events is funny because Donald Trump is going to be remembered in history as the most pro-life president.

 

It was a strange destiny for him. Back in the 1990s when he was thinking of running for president on the Reform Party ticket, Donald Trump had said he was “very pro-choice” and explained that his background of being raised in New York explained why he was against any federal restriction on abortion.

 

In the final presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump was asked whether he wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

 

“Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that’s really what’s going to be — that will happen,” Trump said. “And that’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. I will say this: It will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination.”

 

Promises made, promises kept.

 

In his run for president, Trump decided to make a dramatic play for an Evangelical and pro-life base of voters that might have been skeptical about the former playboy billionaire. Pro-life politics had evolved under previous Republican presidents. Trust was not granted to nominees after Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor. Or George Bush Sr. appointed David Souter. Pro-lifers were able to scuttle the nomination of Harriet Miers under George W. Bush.

 

Advisers close to Trump saw the increasing clout of this bloc of voters and decided not to mince words or offer it euphemisms anymore. Instead, Trump produced a solid list of justices and said that if he were elected president he would nominate justices from that list. He promised to overturn Roe. And he went further than any Republican nominee seeking the presidency ever had in describing with evident physical disgust and repulsion what a late-term abortion involved. Trump then nominated three conservative justices, and all of them voted to overturn Roe when the chance was provided to them.

 

This, more than anything else, is Trump’s legacy in the party and as a statesman.

 

Trump had made immigration his signature campaign issue but could not persuade Congress to fully fund his border wall or implement his preferred immigration reforms. He campaigned as a trade hawk — his longest-held political conviction. He promised he would bring back lost manufacturing dominance to America. Instead, at the opportune moment, he concluded his phony trade war with China, having gotten only a handshake agreement to purchase more soybeans, arguably furthering China’s mercantilist interest in pushing the U.S. further down the value chain. His successor, Joe Biden, has made trade competition with China real again. But on the life issue, and the judiciary generally, Trump was transformative.

 

And so it is political malpractice in his current campaign for the White House to sound so unhappy with the forces he unleashed in the party, and so indifferent to his own signature accomplishment. Sometimes Providence does strange things, and it certainly did something unexpected with Donald Trump. It might be his salvation — politically and otherwise — to embrace it.

 

But that would mean swallowing his pride and allowing the possibility that further litigation of the 2020 election isn’t the winning issue he thinks it is.