Former President Donald Trump is in a tight battle against abortion extremist Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. While Trump is responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade, some of his recent statements about abortion have given many pro-lifers pause about supporting his candidacy this time around.

I write to urge my fellow pro-lifers to take a step back, assess America's view of abortion as it truly stands today, and resolve to vote for Trump in 2024 — not in spite of their convictions but because of them. Otherwise, we risk further radicalization of American abortion laws, resulting in even more dead babies.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

An unseen divide

I hesitate to speak for all pro-lifers, but I suspect many view the abortion issue as I do: Once sperm and egg join, a new person made in the image and likeness of God has been created, and that person is endowed with every natural right — especially the right to life.

Like all vulnerable children, these tiny beings developing in their mother's wombs are also entitled to protection from harm. If there is any ambiguity on whether this entity is indeed a person, then state and federal law should err on the side of preserving it, not killing it.

'And then she heads for the clinic, and she gets some static walkin' through the door.
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore!'

If there is even the slightest chance that the being is a baby, why would we ever think of killing it?

That's how most pro-lifers see the issue. Others, to borrow a metaphor from Scott Adams, are watching the same screen but an entirely different movie.

While most people don't necessarily want to kill a human embryo, a vast majority of average Americans, including many on the right, do want to keep the option of killing it available.

In fact, many of these same people consider pro-lifers and our view of valuing life from conception until natural death to be "extreme."

On a September 2 episode of the podcast "What Are the Odds?" with attorney Robert Barnes, independent pollster Richard Baris gave a frank characterization of the overall American consensus regarding abortion and the pro-life moment. As a pro-lifer with sincere beliefs, I found his assessment difficult to hear.

Baris described some pro-lifers as "zealots" more obsessed with abortion "purity" tests than saving lives.

"You're not viewed very particularly favorably," he explained. "You're viewed as judgmental, self-righteous snobs who look down your nose at everyone and don't have the understanding of a woman who may be struggling with economic concerns."

In effect, Baris believes pro-lifers embody the horrific caricature of us in the 1998 hit Everlast song "What It's Like."

"And then she heads for the clinic, and she gets some static walkin' through the door.
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore!"

Dismissing or denying this mischaracterization of us will do us pro-lifers no good. Perception is reality, and if this is how we are perceived, no wonder so few people listen to what we have to say.

More to the point, this general distaste for pro-lifers and our values has been reflected at the ballot box.

All state-level referenda about abortion since the fall of Roe attest that we are losing the battle of public opinion. Even traditionally red states like Kansas and Kentucky voted overwhelmingly in 2022 against proposals to ban abortion. Last year, Ohioans voted in favor of enshrining the so-called right to abortion in their state constitution.

Voters in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and South Dakota, among others, may follow suit and vote in November to keep abortion legal to some degree in their respective states.

Though many of these 2024 referenda would still restrict abortion in certain cases, especially after fetal viability, some, such as Amendment 4 in Florida, are carefully crafted to include exceptions for a woman's physical and mental "health," thereby effectively permitting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

The true abortion extremists

Which brings us to Trump, who has disappointed many supporters with his recent rhetoric about abortion.

In public speeches, he has repeatedly advocated the usual exceptions of "rape, incest, and the life of the mother." Late last month, he also expressed support for abortion beyond six weeks.

"I’m going to be voting that we need more than six weeks," he said about Amendment 4.

He then angered many of us when he borrowed the language of abortion supporters and promised that his next "administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights."

While his apparent tolerance for some level of abortion is disheartening, Trump has also demonstrated that he cares about pro-lifers and is willing to make concessions to secure their vote. For instance, after severe backlash from pro-lifers on social media, he later clarified that he would vote against Amendment 4.

'The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.'

Democrats like Kamala Harris, on the other hand, are so tightly enmeshed in abortion and the abortion industry that they will never bother to consider pro-lifers or their opinions.

In fact, Kamala Harris has made abortion on demand a central campaign issue.

Using euphemisms about " trust[ing] women to make decisions about their own bodies," Harris has repeatedly dodged questions about whether she would support any limitations on abortion, insisting only that, as president, she would restore Roe-like protections of abortion at the federal level.

At the presidential debate last month, she even refused to say whether she thought abortion should be legal in "the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month." Her vagueness about late-term abortions reveals that she knows how unpopular they are with everyday Americans.

As Trump noted during the debate, though, several states have no restrictions on abortion, effectively permitting doctors to "execute" babies after they are born. Liberal outlets almost immediately reported that his assertion was "false," and ABC News moderator Linsey Davis quickly attempted to fact-check Trump, claiming that "there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born."

If only that were true.

Nine states — including Minnesota, where Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, is governor — have no abortion restrictions "based on gestational duration," according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion advocacy group.

In theory, these states could permit a practice that former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, once blithely illustrated despite the gruesome details.

"If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen," Northam said on radio station WTOP in 2019. "The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother."

Between Harris' refusal to set abortion limits and Northam's suggestion that an infant born alive might be "resuscitated" only "if that's what the mother and the family desired," Democrats have confirmed what the Trump campaign has long argued: "Harris-Walz [and the] Democrats are the real abortion extremists."

Indeed they are. Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, has such a strong relationship with Democrats that a Planned Parenthood affiliate posted a pop-up clinic offering "FREE ... medication abortion" near the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Though advertisements for the clinic did not directly refer to the DNC, Dr. Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, did say that her facility offered the mobile clinic because of the number of "people traveling to Chicago from all over the country."

While Democrats have embraced Planned Parenthood and others who butcher babies, they have at the same time villainized peaceful pro-lifers, treating them as a threat to public safety. The Justice Department under the Biden-Harris administration has even prosecuted some pro-lifers for exercising their First Amendment rights near abortion clinics.

On the Biden-Harris watch, pro-lifers have been intimidated by federal agents and even arrested at gunpoint. While some defendants have thankfully been acquitted, others have been convicted and sentenced to years in prison. Even Catholic nuns are not safe from bullying and harassment under Harris and Biden.

Under a Harris-Walz administration, this persecution would almost certainly continue and perhaps even intensify.

Pro-lifers can help these defendants first by electing Trump and Vance, a Catholic, and then pressuring them to undo this travesty of justice.

Pro-lifers’ best hope in 2024

In an ideal world, abortion would not be a political football because no one would even consider legalizing the effort to kill unborn babies. In reality, we are fortunate that it is such a prominent political issue because it gives us some means of control over it.

In November, we can use that control and that power to elect Trump, a populist Republican who has taken steps to protect life, over Harris, a bloodthirsty, pro-abortion Democrat.

Trump is more than just the proverbial lesser of two evils. While many Republican candidates paid lip service to pro-lifers and made empty promises about ending Roe, Trump took decisive action in the cause of life and nominated the justices who made it happen.

With that, he has saved perhaps thousands of babies from the fate of death by abortion. And since 14 states reportedly no longer have an abortion clinic, that trend is likely to continue.

The disastrous political results of the post- Roe fallout at the state level are not Trump's fault. While Republican state legislators and the major players of the pro-life movement shoulder much of the blame for not better preparing for the end of Roe, that is a topic for another day — after the 2024 election is over.

For now, pro-lifers — myself as much as anybody else — have to admit that we have failed to influence either the culture or American politics in any appreciable way. As Vance said during the vice presidential debate this week, the American people simply do not "trust" us on abortion.

Trump, a professed Christian even if he is an abortion moderate, has offered us an alternative path forward. To wit, Trump wants the citizens of the individual states to decide the matter for themselves.

This idea may be difficult for some of us to accept since it ignores the inherent moral evil of abortion — the intentional killing of a human being — and instead treats abortion like just another social ill like weed or gambling.

It may also sound like we pro-lifers must compromise our sacred beliefs and accept the unacceptable. The bad news is we already do that. Every day since 1973, Americans have tolerated the atrocious deaths of unborn babies via abortion. So this political strategy — and that's what it is, a political strategy, not a moral philosophy or religious doctrine — likely will not impact our daily lives.

As Richard Baris explained, we have "been righteously losing while half a billion babies get terminated every year." In America, the number is actually much closer to a million, but his point still stands.

The good news is that we could actually start winning if we stopped aiming for a total ban on abortion and instead followed Trump's lead and accepted pro-life victories where and when they come.

By digging in our heels and brooking no exceptions in the abortion debate, we have squandered valuable opportunities to find common ground with the majority of the electorate and save at least some unborn babies.

'We must be ready to accept what we can get.'

We could begin by supporting state-level legislation that would end third-trimester abortions or that would require parental consent before minors can undergo abortion. Such measures enjoy a strong level of support across the country.

Other laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period or for women to view an ultrasound before consenting to an abortion have proven to be effective in reducing the number of abortions without implementing an outright ban.

Even Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Archdiocese of Miami recently acknowledged that "we must be ready to accept what we can get through the legislative process" even as we keep our sights on "our ultimate goal" of eradicating abortion entirely.

As noted by the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University, our laws have a powerful impact on culture. So much so that "over time, the legal rule becomes a behavioral norm" that in turn affects “what people know or believe to be true, and shapes what people value.”

We need incremental legislative pro-life victories if we ever hope to convince Americans that abortion is a morally abhorrent violation of human rights that no civilized society should countenance, and those legislative victories begin by electing people to office who are at least sympathetic to our cause.

Trump has already made overtures to pro-lifers and shown a willingness to listen to our concerns. Democrats like Harris most certainly will not listen to us and will instead likely treat us like domestic enemies.

Let us protect ourselves from such maltreatment if we can help it.

Furthermore, let us not sacrifice more unborn babies for the sake of moral purity. Our principles are worthless if they cannot accept that 90 aborted babies, while reprehensible, are still better than 100.

For the sake of the unborn children who can reasonably be saved in the immediate future, we must vote for Trump and forestall a truly deadly Harris presidency.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

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