Brandon Gill’s Master Class in Exposing Abortion Euphemism

By Alexandra DeSanctis

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

 

In a recent hearing on the FACE Act, Republican Representative Brandon Gill put on a master class in exposing pro-abortion euphemism, pressing abortion advocate Jessica Waters of American University on which type of abortion procedure she prefers: saline injection, suction, or dilation and curettage.

 

Waters, evidently uncomfortable with this line of questioning, clung to the fig leaf of “reproductive health care,” declined to answer Gill’s question, and insisted on sticking to the subject of the hearing — namely, abortion facilities.

 

Abortion advocates, as it turns out, are so accustomed to obfuscation that they can unironically insist on discussing abortion facilities while refusing to engage the non-germane topic of . . . abortion.

 

Gill’s performance proves that it isn’t all that difficult to simply refuse the smokescreens that abortion supporters use to obscure the grotesque reality of their position. In doing so, he offers pro-life politicians a blueprint for how to make real headway, even in a gridlocked political climate, by using the rhetorical power of the bully pulpit to drag the truth of abortion into the open.

 

His comments put me in mind of a somewhat similar occurrence nearly a decade ago. During a 2016 presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about abortion, citing Clinton’s opposition to the ban on partial-birth abortion. After Clinton defended her position, Trump said the following:

 

Well, I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.

 

Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay. But it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.

 

It was characteristically inelegant, but it was effective. Pro-life groups heaped praise on Trump for doing what Republican politicians so rarely do: using a highly public stage to expose the simple, horrible fact of what happens in an abortion procedure.

 

Gill’s more sophisticated version of this strategy, albeit on a much smaller stage, reminded me of that moment from 2016. It also reminded me that the Donald Trump who was “not okay” with abortion appears to have vanished — right around the time that the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade.

 

Today, Trump has drifted so far from the pro-life camp that he has begun to draw the ire of the very anti-abortion groups that spent years hailing him as the most pro-life president in history and the great conqueror of Roe.

 

But the president’s sharp leftward turn on abortion is nothing new. Running for a second term, Trump expressed support for chemical abortion and insisted that the Court in Dobbs had returned the issue of abortion to the states, when in fact the ruling left ample room for Congress to act — to say nothing of the executive branch’s tremendous power to regulate abortion.

 

Trump presided over a shameful softening of the GOP platform’s historic support for the right to life of the unborn and an open embrace of IVF, long opposed by pro-lifers due in part to the destruction of embryonic human life.

 

Since his reelection, Trump has overseen an administration that has refused to undo Biden-era pro-abortion policies and has actively opposed pro-life state efforts to regulate chemical abortion. So much for leaving abortion to the will of the people.

 

It ought not surprise anyone when a politician turns out to have been disingenuous. But one does have to wonder whether the Trump who expressed righteous disgust at the reality of abortion still exists somewhere inside the man in the Oval Office today.

 

Was his clumsy effort to expose Clinton’s extremism mere politicking, or was there a part of him that was sincerely appalled after having grasped the violent reality of abortion — and even, if only for a time, converted?

 

Perhaps Gill’s effort to expose the grisly truth of abortion will provoke a crisis of conscience, not only for the president but for all who turn a blind eye to the child in the womb.