Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday he believes abortion in the U.S. will become illegal “in our time.”
“I truly do believe if all of us do all that we can, that we will once again, in our time, restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law,” Pence said that at a lunch with anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List in Nashville. “But we have to do the work.”
“I just know in my heart of hearts that this will be the generation that restores life in America,” he said.
Pence is a longtime foe of abortion who led attempts to cut federal funding from Planned Parenthood while serving in the House. He called President Trump the “most pro-life president in American history” and touted the anti-abortion actions by the Trump administration during his speech, including his appointment of conservative justices.
Trump’s restrictions on abortion reach further than those of his Republican predecessors. He reinstated the Reagan-era Mexico City Policy, banning government aid to organizations involved in abortion, and expanded it to cover all healthcare funding rather than those funds aimed only at family planning. He defunded the United Nations Population Fund and blamed it for forced abortions and sterilizations despite the group’s denial.
Trump and congressional Republicans also moved to let states cut off family planning funds from Planned Parenthood, reversing one of former President Barack Obama’s final actions in office. At the time, Pence delivered the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
“I see more progress in the last year in the cause of life than I have seen in public policy in all of my years,” Pence said.
But he also noted the failed vote in the Senate on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would have made it a crime for doctors to perform abortions 20 weeks into a pregnancy. All but three Democrats voted against the legislation, as did two Republicans.
Pence admonished those who voted against the bill, saying “we have much work left to do.”
