Facing an unsavory election choice, many anti-abortion activists reluctantly have lined up behind Donald Trump, some are actively opposing him and a few are staying quiet.
The camp supporting the Republican presidential nominee is led by Susan B. Anthony Lists’s Majorie Dannenfelser, who is expected with the Trump campaign to announce members of a “pro-life coalition” on Thursday morning.
Some prominent anti-abortion leaders, including Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and former Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest, have joined the coalition in hopes of mobilizing voters and speaking publicly on behalf of Trump in the final weeks before the election.
But there are some glaring absences in the coalition as well, underscoring a divide among anti-abortion activists over whether to support a candidate none of them wanted in order to block Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, someone they’re sure would oppose them at every turn.
Current leaders of Americans United for Life aren’t participating, although the anti-abortion group’s political action wing backed the Republican presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012. Neither are Live Action’s Lila Rose or conservative family policy councils in any of the swing states.
And some heavyweights including Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and prominent Catholic intellectuals George Weigel and Robert George have actively urged conservatives not to support Trump.
“What Trump has succeeded in showing pro-life Americans is that he is not one of us,” George wrote in the magazine First Things in March.
Dannenfelser readily admits that she switched from Trump as her last choice to Trump as her first choice. During the primary season, her group had urged voters to support any Republican but Trump. But now that she thinks he’s the better of two “imperfect” candidates, Dannenfelser’s calculus has changed.
To her, the stakes couldn’t be higher, between a candidate committed to advancing abortion rights versus a candidate who at least claims he’ll try to roll them back.
“The idea that you would ever tell someone you can’t vote for the better of two imperfect people, that’s wrong, I think it’s wrong,” Dannenfelser told the Washington Examiner. “Because there are people who will die as a consequence.”
She cites a key example: the federal Hyde Amendment, which both parties for years have attached to federal spending bills to ensure taxpayer funds aren’t spent on abortion. Clinton has called for ditching Hyde, while Trump has promised he would try to make it permanent law.
“Either the Hyde Amendment stands or it doesn’t stand,” Dannenfelser said. “The consequence is two million children.”
Voting for Clinton just isn’t a choice for many anti-abortion foes, who have long bristled at her stance on abortion, including her vote against the 2003 ban on partial-birth abortion. To them, Clinton is the embodiment of the abortion rights movement, with her longstanding advocacy for expanding access to the procedure and warm relationship with Planned Parenthood.
“It’s hard because for a lot of [groups] he wasn’t their first choice or second choice,” said Students for Life’s Hawkins. “But when you stand at the ballot box and you have to make that decision, you’re going to have to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”
The political action committee of National Right to Life, the best-funded anti-abortion group, has endorsed Trump, although it’s not participating in the prolife coalition.
Trump presents a strange conundrum for conservatives. On one hand, he carries a long history of demeaning comments toward women that would make most conservatives, and voters in general, cringe. Even during the campaign he has made statements that were widely interpreted as insulting, most recently criticizing the weight gain of a former winner of his Miss Universe beauty pageant.
Before this election season, he described himself as “pro-choice” on the issue of abortion, telling Tim Russert in 1999 that he wouldn’t try to ban the procedure if elected president.
Last spring, Trump also tread on dangerous ground for a Republican by praising the health services provided by Planned Parenthood. Six months earlier, the GOP-led House had launched a furious, but ultimately unsuccessful, effort to defund the controversial women’s health and abortion provider.
And in March he got heavy pushback from SBA List and others after saying he backs criminal penalties for women who had an abortion.
Yet when Trump is lined up against other recent GOP presidential nominees, to some leading anti-abortion activists he looks OK — or even better.
Trump’s campaign released a letter earlier this month in which he vowed to oppose abortion in four key ways if elected president. They include signing a ban on abortion midway through pregnancy, appointing abortion-opposing justices to the Supreme Court, stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funds and making the Hyde Amendment permanent.
During his 2012 presidential bid, Mitt Romney made most of those commitments, too, although he never signed a formal letter stating them. But like Trump, he had for years expressed support for abortion rights, as a politician in Massachusetts.
John McCain, the 2008 Republican candidate, had a more consistent anti-abortion record but made few explicit promises beyond saying he would like to see the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion overturned. Conservatives viewed him as somewhat squishy on abortion, after he said the topic should take a backseat to economic and foreign policy issues.
Hawkins said if Trump were to follow through on all the abortion-opposing actions he has promised, it would make him “the most pro-life president our country has ever had.”
“Look at Romney, look at John McCain, they didn’t come out to the pro-life movement with a page-full worth of promises to us,” Hawkins said.
The question that will continue to trouble conservatives, though, is whether Trump will actually follow through should he reach the White House. Even those supporting him remain uneasy with their decision.
Hawkins says she plans to vote for Trump, but she didn’t reach the decision easily.
“Yeah, I am,” she told the Examiner. “This wasn’t an easy journey for me, but I’ll be voting for him.”
