Three reasonable policy proposals for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans.
Frank DeVito of the Napa Legal Institute argues that “pro-life policy purists” need to face political reality: The public isn’t with us on abortion. Pro-lifers should therefore not push the Trump administration to do more to restrict abortion, he argues, although they should urge it to make the case against it more forthrightly than it has done.
He is, of course, correct to note that public opinion is not where pro-lifers would like it to be and that this fact imposes real constraints on what pro-life policies are possible. He is right, too, to say that pro-lifers would be foolhardy to push for bans on IVF. But he takes too narrow a view of pro-life political possibilities, in part because he adopts a false binary view of the prudential question that pro-lifers need to ask.
DeVito writes, “Should pro-life conservatives back off the abortion issue because there is no political ability at the federal level to restrict abortion? Or does being pro-life require maximalist stances on abortion restriction, regardless of whether those efforts have any chance of success?”
But there’s plenty of space between “There’s nothing to be done at the federal level so we should back off” and “maximalist stances.” Here are three proposals that fit in that space.
(1) The first Trump term saw an effort to block family-planning funds from going to Planned Parenthood. That policy, which is in line with the law authorizing that funding, could be reimposed.
(2) The administration could reimpose its first-term restrictions on abortion pills. That policy would draw serious political blowback, certainly. But some polling suggests that the administration would have a solid footing in public opinion. Most recently, 59 percent of respondents to a national poll supported a requirement of “an in-person visit with a healthcare professional” to receive these drugs.
(3) Republicans could resume the drive for a federal law against abortions late in pregnancy, something Trump also supported in his first term. Plenty of polling suggests public support for that policy too. In the same poll cited above, fewer than one-third of respondents believe that abortion should be available in the last three months of pregnancy. Even in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, in 2022, Ted Budd and Marco Rubio won Senate victories while supporting a late-term ban.
Even DeVito concedes that a ban on abortions late in pregnancy “might be possible.” But in that case, why should pro-lifers be telling politicians that “boldly advocating for abortion restrictions will bring about, not greater pro-life policies, but only electoral defeat”? If pro-lifers pick their battles, there is no reason to think that is true.
Update: I should have added a fourth item: Pro-lifers can and should reasonably urge the administration to take a stronger line on taxpayer funding of abortion in the Obamacare-subsidy negotiations. (I think pro-lifers, mostly because of the congressional GOP, are going to prevail on this point.)