In December, Donald Trump ducked a question about whether he would seek to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade in order to allow legislators to pass laws protecting the lives of human beings who haven’t been born yet. “You’re gonna need a lot of Supreme Court justices, but we’re gonna be looking at that very, very carefully,” Trump said. Yesterday, Iowa senator Joni Ernst called on Republican candidates tell voters where they stand on the issue, and this morning Donald Trump published an op-ed at the Washington Examiner titled “My vision for a culture of life.”
Trump’s op-ed has some sharply critical words about Roe v. Wade, but he stops short of saying the decision should be overturned:
Many people who see Roe v. Wade as a deeply flawed decision nonetheless think it should be treated as settled law. Is that Trump’s position, or does he think it should be overturned? The op-ed doesn’t make it clear.
The bigger concern for pro-life voters and conservatives is Trump’s general hostility toward limited government conservatism. If Trump nominated a judge who shared his views on eminent domain–that the government can seize private property and give it to another private citizen to build a factory or a Trump casino–that judge would almost certainly be a liberal activist on issues across the board. The kind of judge who shares Trump’s views on eminent domain may very well discover new rights for illegal immigrants and terrorists in the Constitution, even if these rights are “nowhere to be found” in the text of document.
Of course, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what kind of Supreme Court justices Trump would really nominate because it’s unlikely that Trump could both win the Republican nomination and the general election. According to poll numbers compiled by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, Trump is the most unpopular candidate running for president in either party: 58 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.
