Michigan Wolverines head football coach Jim Harbaugh endorsed a pro-life message while speaking at the July 17 Plymouth Right to Life annual dinner in his state.
“I believe in having the courage to let the unborn be born,” Harbaugh said in his speech. “I love life. I believe in having a loving care and respect for life and death. My faith and my science are what drives these beliefs in me.”
He then quoted Jeremiah 1:5, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Harbaugh, a Catholic with seven children, one of whom coaches with him as an assistant, had his pro-life beliefs instilled in him from a young age, he said. While he acknowledged that unplanned pregnancies “might involve incredible hardship for the mother, family and society,” he concluded that abortion “results in the death of an unborn person.”
He also commented on the fraught situation surrounding abortion’s legality in Michigan. A 1931 law that went dormant after Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973 banned all abortions in the state. Although Roe is gone, there are multiple lawsuits surrounding the ban, and Michigan voters will decide the law’s fate in a ballot referendum in November.
“Passions can make the process messy,” he said,” but when combined with respect, it ultimately produces the best outcomes. This process has been passionate and messy, but I have faith in the American people to ultimately develop the right policies and laws for all lives involved.”
Given the institution for which Harbaugh works, his comments require quite a good bit of courage. The University of Michigan recently created an abortion-access task force to prepare for a possible ban of the procedure in the state. Outgoing interim president Mary Sue Coleman has also lamented the June 24 overturning of Roe.
But courage is certainly no problem for Harbaugh. His wife, Sarah, who spoke on a panel with him, insinuated that her husband’s pro-life stance may impact recruiting. Still, they believe that they are espousing their beliefs “for the right reasons,” she said.
Even then, his previous comments on politics have not affected his success. He has affirmed the right to life of unborn babies before, most recently on a podcast with National Review’s Jay Nordlinger toward the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We talk about sanctity of life, and yet we live in a society that aborts babies. There can’t be anything more horrendous,” Harbaugh said.
A year and a half after making that comment, he rebounded from an abysmal 2020 season to beat the Ohio State Buckeyes and win the Big Ten Championship, so he might not need to sacrifice his principles for victory.
Nor has Harbaugh espoused only right-wing views. Although he said that he respected neither “the motivation or the action” of Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 national-anthem protest, he later clarified that he disapproved only of Kaepernick’s “method of action.” During the summer of 2020 he participated in Black Lives Matter marches in Ann Arbor, and he invited Kaepernick, whom he coached on the San Francisco 49ers before taking the Michigan job in 2014, to be an honorary captain at the team’s 2022 spring game.
Harbaugh’s public views are not necessarily those of a Reagan conservative, but he has demonstrated a penchant for contradicting the left-wing orthodoxy of the University of Michigan, for which he deserves serious praise. He is proof that “Go Blue!” does not necessarily mean “Vote Blue!”