On Monday, former President Donald Trump delivered a statement via video outlining his position on abortion given all that has transpired since his previous term and the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. The statement exemplified what could be called America’s “worldview problem,” a problem at the root of our cultural confusions about sex, morality, marriage, and identity. In fact, the most repeated idea in the president’s short speech was variations of the slogan, “follow your heart,” a motto that Professor Thaddeus Williams has identified to be the central heresy of the false religion of self-worship. At the very least, the slogan provides insufficient ground for adequately wrestling with issues of such grave importance, such as abortion and IVF.
In fact, one of the most helpful aspects of President Trump’s statement is that it contained so many of the wrong assumptions, half-truths, and misguided reasonings about our country’s most pressing issues, all in one place. For example, President Trump proclaimed his support for “the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” but he did not specify which couples should be able to access IVF or for what reasons. By failing to distinguish between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples here, the president only reinforced one of the more dangerous assumptions dominating our society, especially when it comes to artificial reproductive technologies: that the happiness of adults should be prioritized and chosen over and above the wellbeing of children.
The former president also said that IVF provides couples with “a precious baby.” However, IVF often provides couples with about a dozen precious babies, most of which are discarded, frozen, or donated for medical research. Their fates depend on whether they are wanted.
Moving on to the issue of abortion, President Trump stated that both sides, especially legal scholars, wanted to see the end of Roe v. Wade. Obviously, that is not the case, given the hysterical reaction to the Dobbs decision by so many on the Left, including by President Biden and Vice-President Harris and so many Democratic lawmakers. President Trump was correct to identify the Democratic position on abortion as the most radical, with no exceptions or regulations to interfere with a “woman’s right to choose.”
However, he then stated that:
now… we have abortion where everybody wanted it. From a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state… This is all about the will of the people.
Of course, it is true that Roe v. Wade was bad law and badly made law from the beginning. America is better without it. However, those several states that have enshrined or even expanded abortion “rights” since Roe do not have better laws than Roe simply because those laws were decided “by the will of the people.” The will of the people can be just as morally wrong or evil as the will of nine justices. Roe needed to go, but not only because it was wrongly decided. It needed to go because it enabled something that was wrong, namely the taking of innocent preborn life.
Which is why the distinction President Trump made in his comments between execution after birth and execution in utero is both strategically and rhetorically mistaken. This is a distinction abortion advocates make, which no pro-lifer should allow to stand, much less repeat. It’s kind of like saying a murder was worse because it occurred in the bedroom instead of the backyard. It’s a fact of the case, but not one that changes anything about the horrific act of violence or tragic loss of life.
What does make a significant difference in an act of such moral consequence as abortion is why the deed was done. No pro-lifer worth his or her salt thinks, as the former president implied on Monday, that the end of Roe is the end of the matter. Roe didn’t settle the issue of abortion, as abortion advocates long claimed, but neither did Dobbs, for which Trump (wrongly) took full credit. That’s because the goal has always been for abortion to be unthinkable, swept into the same dustbin of history as humanity’s other grave evils.
Which is why, on a worldview level, pro-lifers should take particular issue with the former president’s final exhortation: “We must win. We have to win.” President Trump was suggesting that because the abortion issue is a political liability during this election cycle in a way that it wasn’t during his first election, pro-lifers should back off it. In this calculation, the cause of life is the means. His return to office is the end.
That’s exactly backwards. Even our Declaration states that the purpose of government is to preserve the right to life. The right to life is not a political calculation to be measured on whether it remains helpful. It is one of the reasons the state exists, and something to which we should hold our elected leaders.
While there’s little question where those on the political left stand on this issue, we must not allow preborn lives to become victims of pragmatic politics on either the Right or the Left.
For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
Image credit: ©Getty Images/Scott Olson/Staff
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
