The former President isn’t abandoning his position or expecting his supporters to move left on the controversial topic. He’s expecting them to accept reality and trusting in their ability to act rationally, leading rather than hiding behind a pro-life slogan that has no chance of actually becoming law.
On Sunday, former President Donald Trump angered conservatives for the second time in less than a week on two divisive, controversial topics. The first instance concerned a nuanced answer about transgender people, when he suggested that the trans issue in general was more complicated than simply believing a man cannot become a woman and vice versa. The second concerned abortion, when the former President appeared to oppose a nationwide ban on the procedure and criticized restrictive abortion laws passed by Republicans in an interview with Kirsten Welker of Meet the Press. Asked how he would handle the issue should he return to the White House in 2025, President Trump claimed “both sides are going to like me” and promised he would forge a compromise, “I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable.” The former President didn’t fully commit to what he considered acceptable, stating only that he feels the Democrat’s insistence on no restrictions up until – and at times even after – birth is radical. “Right now, to my way of thinking, the Democrats are the radicals, because after four and five and six months. But you have to say this, after birth. You have New York State and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.” At the same time, he also took aim at conservatives in general and his chief opponent in the Republican Primary, Florida Governor Ron Desantis, specifically. “I mean, DeSanctus is willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban…I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. But we’ll come up with a number, but at the same time, Democrats won’t be able to go out at six months, seven months, eight months and allow an abortion.” Conservatives were, not surprisingly, quick to defend Governor DeSantis. David Strom, writing for HotAir.com, noted that the former President was instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade in the first place, but suggested he has now suddenly changed sides, abandoning ship at the moment of triumph. “Trump’s attack on DeSantis’ heartbeat bill–calling it a ‘terrible thing’ requires rejecting one of the most important pro-life victories in our lifetime. Are pro-lifers seriously willing to do that just to support Donald Trump? Trump didn’t just embrace compromise–he attacked heartbeat bills as ‘terrible.’ Is that a bridge too far? You would think so.” He continued, “If Trump had stuck to the ‘let’s compromise’ rhetoric it would be fairly easy to give him a pass–stopping abortions at 12-15 weeks is much better than abortion until birth and would save countless lives. But actually attacking ‘terrible’ an abortion restriction at 6 weeks means that Trump’s pro-life supporters have to move far to the Left. Are they willing to do that?”
This is necessarily a difficult, if not impossible question, to answer. Evangelical Christians and other pro-life advocates are not likely to change their position on an issue they view in almost entirely moral terms, conceiving of abortion as nothing short of murder. Moving “far to the Left,” to use Mr. Strom’s phrasing, isn’t an option under these circumstances, but fortunately for the former President and the entire country for that matter, I believe this is the wrong way to frame the issue, nor is it what President Trump was asking for in the first place. The way I see it, he isn’t calling for anyone to change their minds or moderate their positions. Instead, he’s stating the reality of the situation simply and plainly. Whatever conservatives may want, abortion is not going to go away suddenly regardless of whether Roe v. Wade is the law of the land as they say. The procedure is a fact of life at this point, and no amount of moralizing – however much I may sympathize with the cause – is going to convince enough Americans to support an outright ban of the procedure, or even an extraordinarily narrow 5-6 week approach. It is true that many Americans, far more than acknowledged by the media, consider themselves personally pro-life, perhaps even a slim majority, but that percentage does not directly equate to an equally large number of people wanting to ban the procedure outright. Surveys generally find that over 60% want abortion to remain legal in some form or another, but what precisely that means gets much murkier from there. AP-NORC broke the question down into four responses in a 2021 poll, whether abortion should be always legal, mostly legal, mostly illegal, or always illegal. The “always legal” response registered only 23% compared to 13% for “always illegal.” The 30% who responded “mostly illegal” and the 33% “mostly legal,” represent 63% of the population. Other surveys have been similarly split, with Gallup finding more than 80% believing the procedure should be legal in any case where the life of the mother is at risk, but only 10% favoring abortion in the third trimester. We can take that to mean the majority of Americans will likely support policies similar to what are already in place in Europe, where abortion remains legal throughout the first 12-16 weeks of a pregnancy and is sharply restricted from there.
Whatever the specifics of a palatable compromise, the former President is correct in his assessment of what overturning Roe v. Wade actually meant, as opposed to what anti-abortion advocates wanted it to mean. The landmark ruling, one five decades in the making, did not suddenly outlaw abortion or change anyone’s minds on the topic. It did, however, change the dynamics of power in how the issue is adjudicated, moving the center of the debate from the courts to Congress and the state legislatures. Rather than men and women anointed in robes deciding the specifics of how abortion is treated in the United States, elected representatives are now empowered, meaning the people have more say in the issue than at any point since I’ve been on this planet. This is an incredibly important development – one I feel was long overdue – but it doesn’t change the reality that abortion remains a complex, divisive topic, and at least so far, the Supreme Court’s ruling appears to have empowered progressives, improving their performance in the 2022 midterms and helping them win special elections in Wisconsin and Ohio at a minimum. In other words, conservatives are in the uniquely awful position of having achieved perhaps their most important legal victory since the 1970s, only to transform it into a political loss. The former President put it this way in his conversation with Ms. Welker. “So you have Roe v. Wade, for 52 years, people including Democrats wanted it to go back to states so the states could make the right. Roe v. Wade — I did something that nobody thought was possible, and Roe v. Wade was terminated, was put back to the states. Now, people, pro-lifers, have the right to negotiate for the first time. They had no rights at all, because the radical people on this are really the Democrats.” Later, he said, “I was able to do something which gave at least pro-life people a voice. Now it’s going to work out. Now, the number of months will be determined.” Here, President Trump, in his best Art of the Deal mode, is framing the issue as it needs to be framed, both for the good of the conservative movement and the country as a whole. Religious conservatives will either make some kind of compromise, or have one forced on them if they continue to lose elections.
If, however, they choose to compromise as President Trump suggested, they have the opportunity to transform a currently losing political issue into a winner. Despite Ms. Welker’s protestations to the contrary, he was almost certainly correct in his assessment that abortion on demand advocates are far outside the mainstream and this offers an opening for Republicans to control the debate. “Nobody wants to see abortions when you have a baby in the womb. I said, with Hillary Clinton when we had the debate, I made a statement, ‘Rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, you’re allowed to do that, and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that.’” Ms. Welker claimed “no one is arguing for that,” when that is precisely what the hardest line abortion supporters are demanding. We know this because of an extreme bill that failed in the Senate last year, which would have legalized abortion anytime, anywhere, with almost no restrictions, going far beyond what was considered acceptable under Roe v. Wade. The mainstream media has been able to obscure these facts by using the Republican’s default pro-life position against them, but this is the argument Democrats would be forced to have if the GOP put forward a reasonable proposal. Of course, President Trump’s framing and the broader compromise he’s advocating isn’t likely to please those with hardened positions on either side of the debate, but it would serve the broad needs of the middle, help end the endless bickering over a controversial issue that has plagued the country for decades, and position Republicans calling for this kind of compromise as the proverbial “adults in the room” willing to tackle the tough subjects while painting their opposition as radical. From this perspective, he is not expecting religious conservatives to move left. He is expecting them to accept reality and trusting in their ability to act rationally, leading on the issue rather than hiding behind a pro-life slogan that has no chance of actually becoming law. The entire country likewise stands to benefit by reaching a workable compromise after fifty years of bitter divisions. This compromise isn’t likely to make anyone completely happy either, but that’s the entire point. Fair minded people not addicted to partisan warfare will simply have to agree to disagree, as we do on many things. It’s long past time to do so on abortion.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 