A spokesman for Donald Trump said that the Supreme Court had given abortion policy to the states and that he thinks that’s where it should stay. The Susan B. Anthony List, which wants a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks, blasted him. It says that the Court did not give policy authority exclusively to the states and that it’s “unacceptable,” “morally indefensible,” and an “abdication of responsibility” for federal officeholders to take that position. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the group, adds, “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections.”
SBA List is certainly correct that the Supreme Court did not say anything about the proper division of authority between the federal and state governments over abortion policy. I think it is right, too, that the Constitution authorizes congressional action to protect unborn children, and that pushing for a federal minimum standard of protection would serve the interests of both the pro-life cause and the Republican Party.
Whether it is prudent, however, to make support for a federal ban into a test of whether someone is pro-life — given that there are sincere opponents of legal abortion who disagree with us about the constitutional point, that such opponents may have reasonable disagreements over the strategy of making a federal 15-week ban central, and given that there is not yet any major presidential candidate who favors that ban — is a different question.