Pro-lifers played in the devil’s casino and won. Donald Trump – Donald Trump! – appointed the three Supreme Court justices whose votes would end Roe v. WadeBut instead of taking their unlikely gains and leaving, many pro-lifers decided to stay and double down, easily helping Trump secure another Republican presidential nomination after his 2020 defeat.

Now they are paying the price. Trump and his MAGA populism are betraying pro-lifers in ways that the old Republican country club establishment could only dream of. The Republicans’ new platform significantly dilutes the party’s commitment to pro-life, and as Alexandra DeSanctis recently wrote for National review“The Republican presidential candidate has basically told pro-lifers to go away.” The result, says DeSanctis, is

a disaster for the pro-life movement, which has long struggled to maintain its influence within the GOP to have a political mouthpiece for its efforts to protect unborn human life. Now, that decades-long work is being undone by a Trump-initiated effort to get rid of the issue forever, based on the wrong idea that a serious pro-life stance represents an electoral risk.

The Republican Party has always been an imperfect and unreliable tool for pro-life politics, and Trump’s approach will make things much worse. Pro-lifers must be aware of the danger our movement faces, be smart and relentless in their political response, and remain hopeful despite the gloom of our culture. We must believe in the legitimacy of our cause: abortion is terrible, and a culture of love and life is better than a culture of selfishness and death.

The immediate political task is to confront Trump’s perfidy – a problem that was predictable. He has been pro-life for most of his life, and his turn to pro-life – aside from perhaps a certain instinctive loathing of late-term abortions – was patently disingenuous and purely factual. So it is not surprising that he has gone back to his factory settings and thrown pro-lifers under the bus now that he feels he no longer needs to reconcile them.

What’s surprising is how many pro-lifers thank him for it. As DeSanctis notes, “leaders from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the American Principles Project, and Americans United for Life” rushed to praise the Republicans’ new Trump-modeled platform. Despite their claims to the contrary, these activists know that pro-lifers have been relegated to the Republican hierarchy. Their determination to appear cheerful probably stems from their knowledge that Trump is petulant and vindictive when criticized, but sometimes receptive to flattery. So even though Trump is clearly marginalizing the pro-life movement, these leaders still hope to get some morsels from him; they know they won’t get anything from the other side.

This assessment may be informed by sober realism, but this also requires honesty about the position of pro-lifers. Unfortunately, the short-term political pressure to flatter Donald Trump and persuade some pro-life workers and politicians to abandon him prevents an accurate assessment of the danger threatening the pro-life movement.

Leadership matters. Politicians influence and respond to public opinion and political options. Trump’s departure from the pro-life movement is already contagious. Senator JD Vance of Ohio betrayed the pro-life movement to become Trump’s vice presidential nominee. Marco Rubio of Florida has come out in favor of much less. We can expect many other politicians to follow suit and limit their support for the pro-life movement or even abandon it altogether. Therefore, fears that a strong pro-life position is electoral poison could easily turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Voters respond to political leadership, and if Republican leaders avoid the issue, they will teach their voters to do the same.

This flight from pro-life principles could result in pro-lifers no longer having a political voice for their political goals. As Patrick Brown recently warned in the New York Times: “Pro-life organizations that insist that the GOP remains Anyone who is as pro-life today as they were in the recent past is deceiving themselves.” And the social conservatives who cheer on Trump as their champion “may be embarking on their own political obsolescence. Politics will always require a certain amount of triangulation and prudence, but too much accommodation is a path to Choice irrelevance.”

While the pro-life movement has not yet reached the nadir of irrelevance, there is a real danger of being sidelined electorally. The rising MAGA faction of the Republican Party is committed to marginalizing the pro-life movement, a goal it shares with much of the old GOP establishment. Despite their differences, both factions would rather harvest pro-life votes while offering little more than not being as bad as Democrats, who are more pro-abortion than ever. To avoid that fate, the pro-life movement must recognize its precarious political position and respond with prudence and care.

Limiting the extent to which Republican leaders run away from the pro-life movement is critical. When it comes to Trump (and Vance), it may be too late, but other figures may not receive the special leniency that Republican voters, activists, and the media have shown Trump—just imagine the storm of criticism that would have descended on Mitch McConnell had he denigrated pro-life positions as Trump has. It may be possible, if difficult, to keep lower-level officials and candidates in line in ways that have become impossible with Trump.

Pro-lifers must also focus on the state level. Unless Democrats gain complete control of the federal government, there will be a battle over abortion laws in individual states. Pro-lifers have been Dobbs decision, but even if they continue their winning streak, they will eventually run out of states in which to use this tactic, so at least some states still protect developing human persons in the womb. And GOP legislators in red states (e.g., Ohio) that passed initiatives adding abortion to their constitutions will have to get back to work regulating abortion through indirect methods, as they did under roeIt will also be crucial to reform state court systems that have a “Missouri Plan” approach that essentially allows the (usually very liberal) plaintiff side to select state judges who then preside over state versions of roe.

The Way forward for pro-lifers will also depend on smart regulation and litigation at the state and federal levels. These efforts will need to be adaptable; defending against the pro-abortion radicalism of a Harris administration will be very different from pressuring (politically, but also in court if necessary) a Trump administration. Even a Trump administration should at least abandon the various pro-abortion administration policies that Biden has pushed through. Particularly important is curbing the dangerous chemical abortion drug ordered by mail. regime implemented by Biden and attempts to circumvent state laws restricting and regulating abortion.

While we can hope for that, pro-lifers must accept that Donald Trump’s return to the White House will do little to help us in the long-term fight for legal protections for people. in the womb. Indeed, it is possible that his return to power would do as much harm as good. We should, of course, try to get what we can from him—from originalist judges to better health and social policies—but we must not tie ourselves and our cause closely to a man who has shown that he despises us. In fact, we must provide a cultural narrative that is markedly different from Trump and what he represents. Donald Trump has lived as an avatar of male compliance and entitlement after the sexual revolution; the Trump lifestyle is incompatible with a pro-life culture, even if he is a temporary political ally.

To win the culture, pro-lifers must offer a compelling alternative vision to both the pro-abortion left and the post-Christian MAGA right. The good news is that this is getting easier, because our culture is a mess when it comes to sex, relationships, and family. As one oft-repeated meme puts it, married millennials look at the relationship landscape of Generation Z and feel like we caught the last helicopter out of Vietnam (or the last plane out of Afghanistan).

The sexual revolution required abortion on demand to eliminate the natural result of intercourse, yet sexual liberation has failed to deliver on its promises. We are now a few generations along—each more liberated than the last—and the result is that men and women are increasingly lonely, childless, and unhappy. In fact, our culture no longer even knows what it means to be a man or a woman, let alone how to provide a reliable template for men and women coming together and creating healthy families. Meanwhile, the abundance of great sex that was supposed to result from the collapse of all the old norms has not materialized.

Men and women are increasingly hostile and have opposing interests, and children are treated as commodities – to be valued, bought or discarded at the discretion of adults. The natural asymmetry of human reproduction is seen not as a reason for cooperation and solidarity between the sexes, but as inherently predisposed to exploitation, hostility and violence. For those living in this landscape of loveless and unstable relationships, abortion seems necessary. Yet amid this cultural wreckage, a life based on genuine pro-life values ​​becomes one of our most powerful tools of persuasion because it is characterized by hope, love and goodness.

Despite the political challenges facing pro-life activists after the end of the roewe should speak confidently to our culture. It is not just that abortion is terrible (although it is), but that the culture that abortion perpetuates and promotes is pathetic. Pro-lifers are called not only to defend life, but to proclaim and live a better way of life.

Image by Tokyo Studio and licensed through Adobe Stock. Image resized.