Are Republican presidential candidates afraid of being
pro-life
?
Former Vice President and current Republican presidential candidate
Mike Pence
recently criticized his primary competitors, including former President
Donald Trump
, for “retreating” on the subject of abortion and treating it as an “inconvenience.”
CONGRESS CAN DO MORE TO PREVENT MEGAFIRES
“After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn,” Pence said
in Iowa last week
. “The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century — long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now, he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Pence is right. Abortion is not going away. Even though the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, unborn babies’ lives are still being terminated every day in this country, and blue states will continue liberalizing their laws, especially regarding late-term abortions.
Given that
more than 60 million
unborn lives have been lost in this country over the past 50 years due to legal abortion, Republicans must address this matter head-on because ignoring it will not make the problem disappear.
That is not to say that every Republican must run on unworkable solutions that have no shot of passing and would hurt their electoral chances in a general election.
Ideally, the GOP would have a two-thirds supermajority and add a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. However, the party lacks the votes to make that happen. It will most likely lack the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to enact even a 15-week gestational limit, liberal by European standards, if a Republican wins the White House, as GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has
correctly pointed out
.
Running on a platform that includes a so-called national abortion ban, which would restrict
fewer than 5%
of abortions and have little chance of becoming law, would not solve the problem. But candidates should, at least, offer pragmatic solutions to decrease the number of babies aborted in the country.
Their best chance to do this is by running on policies that
reduce the demand for abortion
, either by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies or offering more support to women facing them.
Republican presidential candidates could support greater contraceptive access. They could
direct the Food and Drug Administration
to
allow pharmacists
to dispense oral contraceptives to women without a doctor’s prescription and commit to reinstating the Trump-era
“Protect Life Rule.”
The rule disqualified family planning clinics that promote abortion from receiving Title X family planning funding. Then, they could support
increasing Title X funding
to expand contraceptive access because the program pays for itself.
Additionally, candidates could
support a larger child tax credit
, perhaps increasing it from $2,000 to $2,500 or $3,000 per child. They could also back a more generous adoption tax credit and
ending the marriage penalty
of the earned income tax credit. After all, married women are
less likely
to abort than unmarried ones.
Perhaps they could also pursue policies that lower the cost of raising a child, including combating high child care and healthcare costs and finding ways to expand access to paid family leave. In his 2024 reelection bid, Trump has
touted a baby bonus scheme
, which would provide some financial support to families taking time off after childbirth, although he has offered little detail on how it would work.
Although Pence has little chance of winning the Republican nomination, his presence in the race should remind other Republicans that even if they know a so-called federal ban is not attainable, abortion is a problem they must help address.
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Tom Joyce (
@TomJoyceSports
) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
