This coming Tuesday, Ohioans will vote (if they haven’t voted already, that is) on Issue 1, a proposed state constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion as a fundamental right. If a simple majority votes yes, a whole host of ominous outcomes become likely, starting with the gutting of the state’s existing restrictions on abortion (including parental-notification and -consent laws and a 24-hour waiting period), and extending all the way to abortion being available through the third trimester (and funded by taxpayers).
As Election Day approaches, the outcome appears uncertain. So where is Donald Trump? One of Trump’s best moments as a political figure was his vivid description of abortions late in pregnancy during a 2016 presidential debate. “If you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,” Trump said. “Now you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me.” The back-and-forth on abortion summoned the usual legion of fact-checkers. But as Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out at the time, Trump was in the right. “That is the logic of her position on late-term abortion, which is that an abortionist should be free to perform an abortion at any stage of pregnancy if there is a health reason for it, including a reason of emotional health.” Pleasantly surprising his skeptics, Trump proceeded to govern as a pro-life president, an attribute culminating in the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which would have been impossible without the three Supreme Court justices he appointed.
Trump’s weighing in against Ohio’s Issue 1 could be helpful for pro-lifers. In a state he won comfortably twice, and in which he remains popular, the risks of his discoloring the pro-life cause are far outweighed by the potential benefits of his supporting it — especially if he focuses on the kinds of abortion that rightly disgust him and that Issue 1’s passage would enable in the state. An ad aired by pro-lifers in the state focused on his comments to this effect. And drawing the legion of fact-checkers once more into the fray would spotlight the issue of late-term abortion, which makes even abortion advocates uncomfortable. Trump’s speaking out against Issue 1 might also help persuade the voters whom he uniquely activated — thereby turning a state that had previously voted twice for Barack Obama into a deep-red one — but who might be unsure about his position on the matter. Obama has already weighed in on behalf of Issue 1; will Trump let this go unanswered?
One hopes that Trump’s silence is not attributable to a general disfavoring of the pro-life cause that he has worryingly displayed in recent months. Pro-life voters were an essential part of the coalition that delivered him the White House; in the White House, he delivered for them. He could do such voters a favor, one that would go a long way to their forgiving his recent comments, if he made the stakes in Ohio clear.