I am pro-life and I'm voting for Trump.
I will tell you at the outset that I think the Trump campaign has fumbled its current political strategy on abortion.
What is my evidence for this? Pro-lifers and conservatives in general are at each other's throats on Twitter/X over the question of abortion. That is less than ideal about two months from a presidential election.
I have cared about the abortion issue longer and harder than anything else in politics and culture, I just had my first baby, and this is where I'm at:
— Abby Libby (@abbythelibb_) August 26, 2024
Trump has put me in a position where my conscience is violated no matter what I do. Vote for him, stay home, vote for Harris,…
I did a quick search of Twitter/X for some of the top tweets in the recent dustup, such as the one above from a user named 'Abby Libby'.
In true Twitter fashion, Abby was met with some support and a lot of pushback
Of course I'll vote for him, but I feel absolutely sick about it, and screaming at me to shut up about this is doing nothing to convince me Trump isn't leading this party to abortion acceptance. I have had quite enough of the insults and bad faith accusations from fellow Conservatives on this issue.
Abby's view is not uncommon. I understand where she's coming from.
My view on abortion is extreme by most people's standards. I'm not just pro-life, I'm unashamedly anti-abortion. There is no exception where taking an innocent human life for the convenience of another is acceptable. The handful of cases where abortion is necessary to save the mother's life are so rare, if they exist at all, to be statistically insignificant to the debate.
You can't have just a little abortion, just like you can't have just a little slavery.
I was not happy when Trump disparaged state abortion bans, when he made abortion the scapegoat for a poor midterm election, his recent use of the pro-abortion term 'reproductive rights', and VP nominee Vance's insistence that Trump would veto a federal abortion ban.
Given my criticisms of some of the recent messaging on abortion from our side, how would I answer Abby and those like her?
To begin, attacking pro-lifers who are struggling with the question is certainly not the wise path forward.
If someone doesn't think just like you and support your preferred candidate, you have a moral obligation to destroy them. This is the American way.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) August 27, 2024
Some ardent pro-lifers like Lila Rose are taking a lot of heat for voicing criticism. To what end? How many votes are we going to secure in 2024 by trashing people with valid concerns?
A better approach, in my opinion, is for pro-life Trump voters to explain how we arrived at our decision.
One method would be responses like the following:
- Shut up and go vote for baby-killer Kamala then.
- You're not really pro-life if you're not going to vote for the guy who ended Roe v. Wade.
- We have to win elections so we need to soften our messaging on abortion.
I can assure you those responses aren't going to persuade the type of pro-life voter we're in danger of losing - voters we very much need if we're going to win the upcoming election.
On the flip side, telling Trump voters they're no longer pro-life is equally false and just as unhelpful.
What would-be Trump voters need is to be able to cast a pro-life vote in good conscience, even if they sharply disagree with the recent campaign messaging on abortion.
If those of you who are *so angry* some pro-lifers aren’t voting Trump, have you tried - I don’t know - trying to persuade them? Or do you feel that the constant demeaning and berating them is effective?
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) August 26, 2024
The audacity of some of you to call pro-life voters “grifters” for…
How would I, then, persuade my fellow pro-lifers? How do I in good conscience settle the moral question in my mind?
Frankly, it's not difficult for me, and I don't say that to be dismissive of others' views. It's not hard for me because I've been doing it from the first time I cast a ballot.
The GOP I grew up with clinked cocktail glasses with Bill Kristol and shared a general disdain for their base and their pesky views on moral issues.
They gave us George W. Bush and his pro-choice wife - a man who I believed to be genuinely pro-life. His silence on the fall of Roe, however, was deafening. They gave us Mitt Romney who had to become pro-life after leaving Massachusetts to win enough of the base to be nominated. And they gave us moderate Republicans like John McCain whose claim to fame was being a 'maverick' because he annoyed his own party. That is how we got Trump and the new GOP would be wise to avoid returning to those days of soft-selling our moral positions.
I'm used to voting for candidates who I know don't share my views on abortion.
I have been under no illusions about Donald Trump's position on abortion since I first voted for him in 2016. I've never believed Trump is pro-life in the way that I am pro-life.
'But Trump got Roe overturned!' many would respond.
Yes, he did. Donald Trump, three Trump-appointed justices, two more from the Bushes, and a 'swampy' Senator from Kentucky whom not many on the right seem to like anymore deserve the credit for striking the ridiculous Roe decision down.
Is Donald Trump the most pro-life president we’ve had?
— Tandy (@dantypo) August 27, 2024
Nope.
But Donald Trump is the most successful president we’ve had on the pro-life issue.
While I doubt whether the pro-life cause is truly a core belief of most of the GOP candidates I've voted for, including Trump, I know that Trump made more progress on the issue than any before him.
To me, Trump is not a pro-life warrior. Trump is a hammer.
We show him the nails and he hammers them.
That was Trump's true strength as president. He tried to do the things that he said he was going to do. A novel approach, I know.
He said he was going to try to fix our borders and he tried to do it. He said he was going to give a tax cut and he did it. He said he would improve the situation in the Middle East and he made good progress.
He promised to select SCOTUS nominees from a pre-published list of judges who would be acceptable to conservatives, and he did just that.
Trump is going to be hammering away at something. This is why I have no problem with pro-lifers making clear their dissatisfaction with the recent messaging on abortion.
Trump listens to what people say and he tries to nail down their concerns. He's been hearing a lot of people claiming that 'reproductive rights' are the most important thing in their world and Trump instinctively believes he can appeal to them.
A voter whose primary motivating factor is 'the right to have an abortion' is not voting for Trump in a million years, no matter what messaging the GOP or the campaign employs.
Pro-life voters who are objecting to the messaging are GOP voters. They should make their voices heard and others on the right should not dismiss their concerns. These are votes that could be lost, and Trump needs to know that. Show him the nail so he can stay on point, hammering away at the issues his voters care about.
We’re in a gigantic cultural battle that will outlive us all. It will certainly outlive this election.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) August 26, 2024
Knowing that, here’s two things I won’t do:
-Torpedo Trump’s election cause he’s not as pro-life as me
-Destroy pro-lifers cause they’re not pro-Trump enough
If you really want to win in 2024, don't offend a core part of your base. Don't get baited by Democrats into making abortion a central issue, and focus where Trump wins easily: America first, high prices, and border security.
I have no qualms reconciling my abortion stance with my vote for Trump because I know I'm not just electing a president. I'm electing an administration and those who can influence it.
I know there will be a lot more people who share my pro-life views in a Trump administration than there will be in a Kamala Harris administration.
Abby, whose tweet I shared at the beginning, knows this too. 'Of course I'll vote for him', she said. We know Trump is the better choice because we know who his opposition is.
We can encourage voters like Abby with the truth that she is making a perfectly defensible moral choice. When you know one political choice is clearly imperfect but demonstrably more in line with the pro-life position than the other choice, you can, in good conscience, cast your vote for the former.
Your integrity is not damaged by choosing the better of two imperfect options. Even more so when the gulf between them is undeniably vast.
When we elect @KamalaHarris as our next president alongside a Democratic Congress, we'll restore reproductive freedom across the country.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 27, 2024
70 days to make it happen. https://t.co/bDxnheT85h
A Kamala Harris administration could be devastating to the pro-life cause. With a clear conscience, I'll do my part to try to stop her.
Now let's get back to fighting the Harris-Walz campaign instead of each other.
