Another Trump Middle Finger to Pro-Lifers
Social conservatives find themselves on the receiving end of a potentially-lethal snake bite
Unfortunately for you all, I had a really fun subject line and topic all teed up for this week’s newsletter, but…events, dear boy, events.
The Main Event: Trump Throws Pro-Lifers Under the Bus…Again
Et Cetera
The Main Event
We all remember “The Snake” poem from 2016, when then-candidate Trump would recite the ditty about the woman who is surprised, upon reviving her anguine guest, that it proceeds to do just what snakes always do.
Oh, shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.
With apologies to Oscar Brown, who wrote the original, social conservatives knew damn well Donald Trump was a thrice-married New York real estate magnate who had described himself as “very pro-choice” before they took him in. And now the pro-life movement finds itself on the receiving end of a potentially-lethal snake bite.
The approach has been - and, for many, continues to be - that despite his personal foibles and self-evident lack of commitment to conservative principles, he could be used as an effective tool for achieving conservative ends. As a new book by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer details, it was a high-stakes gamble for pro-life conservatives that ended up paying off, most notably in the successful nomination of three Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade.
This mindset perhaps reached its apogee in proposals suggesting that under the next Republican president, “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” Whatever the merits and constitutional permissibility of the proposal itself, the idea that Donald J. Trump, of all people, was going to countenance banning porn verged on the absurd. And now, desperate to win moderate or apolitical voters in a tight election year battle, the Trump campaign is looking to create as much daylight as possible between it and long-time conservative principles.
Trump, who clearly sees his transaction with the pro-life movement having been completed with the Dobbs decision, now wants to Sister Souljah social conservatives. Fresh off promising his administration would be “great” for women’s “reproductive rights,” forswearing any federal legislation on abortion, affirming access to medication abortions (which account for the majority of abortions in the U.S.), and denuding the G.O.P. platform of its longstanding commitment to unborn life, Trump thrust yet another middle finger towards pro-lifers in his interview with NBC News on Thursday.
Florida is faced with a ballot amendment that would wipe nearly all restrictions on abortion off the books this fall. It needs 60% of votes to pass, so pro-lifers had been modestly hopefully they could keep the “yes” vote under the threshold. But their cause will not be helped by Trump suggesting that he is “going to be voting that we need more than six weeks” (though his campaign later “clarified” that he “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative.”) This, of course, comes after Trump has repeatedly stressed how “everyone” should be happy that the Dobbs returns abortion regulation to the states. Apparently his version of federalism only goes one direction, as his sandbagging of the efforts of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other pro-life Florida Republicans could push the “yes” side over the finish line in November - a catastrophe for the pro-life cause in the Sunshine State and nationwide.
But wait - there’s more. At a rally that night, he outlined a proposal for covering IVF either through an Obamacare insurance mandate or paying for it with public money. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost per successful IVF outcome ranges somewhere around $61,000, and over 90,000 babies were born via IVF in 2022 (2.5% of all births nationwide.) That’s a static estimate of $50 billion over a ten-year budget window, putting aside what universally available free IVF would do to increase demand. For those who remember the contraceptive mandate fight of 2012, this would be that — on steroids.
The proposal is justified on the grounds that America wants more babies. And of course we do. But increasingly widespread access to IVF has done nothing to stem the decline in birth rates across the globe (partly because of the dynamic that giving women a false sense of security around egg freezing might change their calculus around finding a partner.) And the party that has traditionally been concerned with marriage and family should be extremely skeptical about any proposal that would effectively turn fertility into an individualized right, rather than supporting efforts for child-rearing to take place in a two-parent family. No one is suggesting Republicans run on banning IVF, but it shouldn’t be beyond the pale to note that America’s largely deregulated fertility industry adopts practices around embryo creation and destruction that are well outside international norms. A mindset that embraces untrammeled IVF for all would pave the way, as Leah Libresco Sargeant recently wrote for Deseret News, for a world in which casual eugenics is expected, if not required.
The moral questions at the heart of IVF are ones committed social conservatives remain in a significant minority on. But the social ramifications of universal, taxpayer-funded IVF are huge enough to cause anyone concerned about what it might mean to turn human life into a commercial good or further destabilizing the institution of the family to stand athwart Trump, yelling stop.
Because while Trump remains who he has always been, the pro-life movement could choose to call him out on being treated like yesterday’s garbage. They can’t be surprised that he eschews the policy priorities they hold dear because he’s made clear all along he didn’t care about them. Politics will always be transactional, and the 2016 gamble paid off — until it didn’t.
The long-term consequence for the pro-life movement covering for Trump, rather than calling him out, will not just be the massive repetitional hit of continuing to ally with someone who is uniquely odious to many college-educated suburban women. It will be that he is realigning the G.O.P. along his effectively pro-choice personal stances. Republican House members will be put under tremendous political pressure to go along with Trump’s stance when they get back from recess, according to reporting from Politico’s Sarah Ferris and Olivia Beavers.
Republican Governors around the country - most notably Gov. DeSantis, who has recently elevated his work to warn Floridians about the consequences of Amendment 4 - have staked political capital to protect life and advance conservative principles. And they have won re-election. Meanwhile Trump, as National Review’s Jim Geraghty succinctly pointed out, has jettisoned long-standing conservative beliefs to cover for his own, well-known political baggage and shortcomings.
If there are those in the pro-life movement want to argue the short-term consequences of a Harris administration are so great that they outweigh the long-term damage posed by Trump, they are free to. But too many pro-lifers greet each time they have been thrown under the bus by Trump with more justifications and excuses. They will have to ask themselves at what point having to rely on a likely razor-thin Republican Senate majority to forestall much of the policy damage will be worth the benefits of starting with a clean slate in 2028. For some of us, that hour seems to have arrived.
Et Cetera
Reports: Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Mental Health & Well-Being of Parents (HHS)…Prenatal Tax Credits and Child Support for the Unborn: A Literature Review (Charlotte Lozier Institute)
Articles: Trump and Harris Embody a Stark Partisan Divide on Fighting Poverty (Jason DeParle, New York Times)…The Unequal Effects of School Closings (Alec MacGillis, ProPublica)…China's kindergarten closures foreshadow economic hit from falling births (Wataru Suzuki, Nikkei Asia)…High US childcare costs pose an election risk for Kamala Harris (Martha Muir and Colby Smith, Financial Times)…Activist Lila Rose Under Fire for Suggesting Trump Hasn’t Earned the Pro-Life Vote (Harvest Prude, Christianity Today)
Takes: America’s Anti-Family Turn Marriage (Robert W. Patterson, Modern Age)…Republicans Need to Take a Stand on Abortion (The Editors, National Review)…Three Books on What Being a Parent Really Means (Jennifer Frey, Wall Street Journal)…Trump’s pro-life betrayal is morally wrong and electorally foolish, Andrew T. Walker, World)…Long a Stranger to the Spotlight, Child Tax Credit Earns Embrace of Both Parties (Kevin Mahnken, The74)…Politicians Won’t Fix America’s Child Deficit, But Churches Can (Nathanael Blake, The Federalist)…Kamala’s commitment to the care economy is great, but she needs to commit to the construction economy as well (Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect)
Events: Sharon Parrott, Kyle Pomerleau, Matt Weidinger, and Jessica Fulton will discuss the CTC and EITC on a National Academies webinar Sept. 9…AEI is holding a launch event for its new book, “Doing Right by Kids,” featuring some of the usual suspects doing the best thinking around opportunity and social capital Sept. 11…If you’re in D.C., check out Scott Winship, Sam Hammond, Leah Libresco Sargeant, and David McGarry talking about work at the Last Call Bar on Sept. 17…
Roundup: Ohio: Rep. Gary Click introduced a bill to allow parents to claim conceived children as dependents on their state income taxes…Vermont: Child care operators say the state’s new payroll tax-funded subsidy program has given them stability…Michigan: Rx Kids, a baby bonus program in Flint, is expanding to Kalamazoo next year…Missouri: Senate Republicans are calling for hearings into why a months-long backlog has stalled child care subsidies
Elsewhere: My review of Dias and Lerer’s “The End of Roe” and Shefali Luthra’s “Undue Burden” for The Dispatch…The pitch is simple: “Get married, have a baby, receive a $4,000 check” - my baby bonus take for American Compass…Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry kicks the tires on my baby bonus proposal at PolicySphere.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line, and then sign up for more content and analysis from EPPC scholars.
Today I'm going to meet with a close friend. It may be the last time I meet with him.
He has remained childless because he refuses to use IVF on religious grounds. His wife wants to use IVF and they both want children. He has wasted seven years of her life and she is getting close to 40, the window is closing.
I have tried to talk to him in a nonjudgmental way up until now, and I know he's gotten the judgmental take from others. But I can't stay silent anymore. What's he's done is a sin, worse than abortion in my opinion.
When we were going for our third around the same age the fertility clinic said she has a "diminished ovarian reserve". Which is fancy talk for her ovaries eggs were probably one or two years further along than her age would say. It was a miracle our third was born.
According to my friend, I am now in a state of mortal sin. The equivalent of getting an abortion, of being a murderer. As I don't think I did anything wrong I have no plans to confess and repent. Therefore, I'm going to hell according to him.
I hope to change his mind, but if not I think that it's time to acknowledge that the church is just loopy on this. I very much hope my kids use IVF one day, and if raising them in the church will prevent that I will ditch the church.
Perhaps pro-life leaders should be reminded that the American Solidarity Party is totally pro-life. Its presidential candidate is on the ballot in enough key states to ruin Trump's chances of winning. Using the threat of an alternate candidate vote could be enough leverage to get Trump back into the pro-life camp.