Nearly four years after the pro-life movement achieved its biggest victory with the reversal of Roe v. Wade, antiabortion activists are trying to maintain their powerful status inside the Republican electoral coalition.
This year’s March for Life found abortion opponents debating how they can best maintain their leverage over the White House and Republican elected officials to use the power to set policy on this issue they gained with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Pro-life influence in Republican politics was evident for decades. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sat atop national polls for most of the year before the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. He was “America’s Mayor” and seen as a hero during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His endorsement and campaign appearances were coveted by Republicans even in blue states.
Yet, once 2008 rolled around, Giuliani didn’t win a single primary. The main reason was abortion. Giuliani was pro-choice. He had switched to that position before his first, unsuccessful run for mayor of New York in 1989. It was seen as a necessity in such a heavily Democratic area. Giuliani did not think he could successfully flip-flop again, though he did pledge to support some abortion restrictions and nominate anti-Roe judges.
For pro-life leaders, this wasn’t good enough. They and other social conservatives banded together to oppose his nomination. This contributed to Giuliani’s disastrous decision to avoid the early states in the 2008 GOP primaries. He thought Iowa and South Carolina were too socially conservative and pro-life for him to win. Giuliani didn’t want to face Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, or John McCain in the more pro-choice state of New Hampshire.
Giuliani tried to make his stand in Florida. But by the time that primary took place, the race had passed him by. Republicans did not end up nominating a supporter of legal abortion for president that year.
Future Republican presidential candidates with pro-choice pasts made different tactical decisions. Romney, who had campaigned as a backer of abortion rights in liberal Massachusetts, changed his position ahead of his first GOP presidential bid. He was rewarded with the party’s presidential nomination on his second try in 2012.
Then came the thrice-married, twice-divorced reality TV star Donald Trump, Giuliani’s fellow New Yorker. He declared himself “totally pro-choice” when he first flirted with a national run in 1999, though he admitted he despised “the concept of abortion.” But when Trump sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, he changed his position. He opposed abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger, like every GOP nominee since Ronald Reagan.
When Trump won the nomination, he picked a solid pro-lifer as his running mate in Mike Pence. The Republican platform kept its strong language against abortion, the product of years of work by pro-life activists. He made a list of conservative potential Supreme Court nominees and pledged to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, kept open by Senate Republicans who blocked then-President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, with a like-minded jurist.
Trump kept his promises. He issued the same executive orders on abortion as the last three Republican presidents. He appointed conservative judges. And when the time came, every single Trump nominee to the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe. He has expressed pride in his contribution to that pro-life victory.
But Trump was also mindful of the liberal backlash against Dobbs. He blamed abortion for the Republicans’ underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections, which took place months after Roe fell. He urged Republicans to be politically smart about the issue.
“I have to tell you from a conservative and Republican standpoint, you have to learn how to talk about pro-life, you have to learn how to talk about that decision,” Trump said in 2023. “Because you don’t know how to talk about it.”
Democrats, Trump said in South Carolina that year, “have energized this issue and the Republicans are going to have to learn how to fight it.”
Trump once again won the Republican presidential nomination and chose a committed abortion foe, then-Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as his running mate. But Vance had seen up close setbacks for the pro-life cause at the ballot box in his home state of Ohio. Trump weakened the abortion plank in the 2024 Republican platform. Democrats planned to make it a major issue in the fall campaign.
The triangulation strategy largely worked. According to exit polls, Trump won 92% of voters who thought abortion should be illegal in most cases and 88% who believed it should be illegal in all cases. But he and former Vice President Kamala Harris split voters who thought abortion should be legal in most cases at 49% apiece.
Trump carried 91% of voters who said abortion should be illegal. He still managed 29% of those who thought it should be legal. He barely lost to Harris on the question of who voters trusted more to handle abortion, 49% to 46%. Trump won the popular vote by 49.8% to 48.3%.
Since returning to office, Trump has frustrated pro-life activists by not restricting access to abortion pills by mail, undercutting state-level abortion restrictions made possible by Dobbs. He also appointed a pro-choice secretary of health and human services and waffled on Hyde Amendment restrictions on abortion funding as part of an Obamacare subsidies fix.
MIFEPRISTONE SCIENCE: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ABORTION PILL
Vance counseled prudence at the March for Life on Friday as activists contemplated how to maximize their influence.
There is only one anti-abortion Democrat left in Congress. The movement can’t afford to lose its place at the table in the Republican Party.
