Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Recent headlines are all about Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance predicting on a Sunday morning talk show that, if re-elected, President Donald Trump would veto any national bill banning abortion.
As is so often the case with the legacy media, they were asking the wrong question.
In the current political climate, such a pro-life bill would not make it to Trump’s desk. Congress doesn’t have the political will, and the filibuster creates a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
So asking a question like NBC’s Kristen Welker asked is setting up a scenario that is totally devoid of reality.
Another unlikely scenario is a Democrat-controlled Congress sending to Trump the Women’s Health Protection Act, a radical piece of legislation that would undo every pro-life law in the nation.
I wonder why they didn’t ask about that.
I am still waiting for the interview in which the media ask about the actual pro-life measures that will be within the President’s power from day one, all of which he did in his first term. For instance:
- Will you reinstate the expanded Mexico City policy, which so efficiently kept U.S. tax dollars from flowing to abortion profiteers overseas?
- Will you reinstate the rule barring any organization that receives Title X funds for family planning from discussing abortion with their clients?
- Will you continue to appoint federal judges who understand that the right to life is fundamental to our Constitution?
- Will you have the United States once again sign on to the life-affirming Geneva Consensus Declaration?
- Will you again defund the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which peddles abortion ideology in 150 nations?
- Will you reinstate the office of Conscience and Religious Freedom within the Department of Health and Human Services?
But, of course, the Trump-hating media are not interested in making the President seem reasonable to pro-life and pro-choice people alike, by reminding them that he supports pro-life measures that most Americans likewise support.
Anti-Trumpers don’t want to remind pro-life people of what he actually accomplished, because that might encourage rather than suppress the pro-life vote.
We already have the tools we need to change public policy in a second Trump term to better protect the unborn.
We need freedom of speech, so we can educate people on abortion; freedom of religion to activate churches to protect the unborn; freedom of assembly to allow for pro-life marches, rallies, protests and prayer vigils; and, importantly, existing pro-life laws, which actually keep some money away from abortion businesses and protect some babies.
These tools already are in our arsenal, but the Democrats want to take them away from us. They’re throwing peaceful pro-lifers in prison, censoring pro-life speech, trying to shut down pregnancy centers and canceling pro-life politicians.
President Trump is the best person to protect the tools we need in order to end abortion. We don’t need him to give pro-life speeches or commit to signing bills – like a national ban on abortion – that aren’t going to come to his desk in the first place.
We have to get him elected, because if the Democrats have their way, the pro-life movement will not have the political freedom to protect any babies.
And yet here we are, over the weekend and today, arguing on social media and in the press about whether we can support President Trump because, as some say, he’s “backing away” from the pro-life position.
In reality, the choice before us is not between President Trump and somebody better. It’s between President Trump and somebody worse. It’s between President Trump, who made it possible for states to protect the unborn, as many of them now do and will continue to do, and Kamala Harris, who wants to take away the ability of states to protect the unborn by making abortion a fundamental constitutional right.
I often say that mothers do not choose abortion because they have freedom of choice, but because they have no freedom and no choice. In this election, if we want to preserve our freedom to protect life, there is only one choice.