Donald Trump told viewers of Meet the Press that it was “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake” for Ron DeSantis to sign a bill outlawing abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. He promised also to achieve a settlement on abortion that will please everyone: “I think both sides are going to like me.” In the same interview, he promised he would “get a deal worked out” between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. Evidently the former president is again feeling bullish about his negotiating skills.
The domestic ambition may be the more absurd. The key to resolving the abortion controversy, he says, is to “come up with a number of weeks or months . . . a number that’s going to make people happy.” Presumably that’s more than six weeks but less than six months. He promises further that “we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”
Peace is a laudable objective. But tens of millions of Americans prioritize peace in the womb: an end to the violence of abortion. They will and should accept provisional compromises that extend protection to some unborn children when they cannot secure protection for all. They will and should not accept the exposure of hundreds of thousands of unborn children to legal killing on a permanent basis. If the debate is to end, it will have to be because pro-lifers give up, lose influence, or persuade enough of our fellow citizens to prevail. Trump’s goal appears to be one or both of the first two outcomes, but none of them is in prospect.
Florida, Ohio, Georgia, and Iowa all have the sort of pro-life laws that Trump is now condemning. How would he have those states please everyone in the debate? Would he sign a law forcing them to allow abortions after six weeks? Side with the legal activists trying to wipe out these laws? Convince pro-lifers in those states that they should retreat from legal protections they have already won?
The correct answer is that he hasn’t given the matter a moment’s thought. What he has doubtless thought about is the short-term politics of his new position. He is banking that he has enough goodwill from pro-lifers for his admittedly substantial past services that we will gladly acquiesce in our own marginalization. Whether he is right in making that bet is something pro-lifers will have to decide.