Over the course of the campaign, as he’s internalized the idea that opposition to abortion is a drag on Republicans, President Trump has been tempted to revisit his old pro-choice positions. Up until now, however, he has calibrated his statements in a way that could still be defensible from a pro-life perspective.
That all changed today, however, with a single post on Truth Social:
It’s one thing to argue that abortion should be left up to the states, which is a position of disagreement among pro-lifers of good faith and one to which I am sympathetic. Trump has on several occasions gone beyond that by criticizing state laws, such as the Florida heartbeat bill signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, as “too harsh,” but such criticism was left out of the RNC platform that Trump endorsed.
The latest Truth Social post is different. The idea that his administration would be “great” for “reproductive rights” is hard to interpret in any other way than as an affirmatively pro-choice statement. By the common usage of the term, if you support reproductive rights it means you want broader access to abortion.
Trump deserves all the credit he gets from pro-lifers for appointing the justices who overturned the legal atrocity of Roe v. Wade. But overturning Roe was only the necessary first step of a much longer battle to protect the lives of the unborn. And on that battle, it increasingly looks like Trump is joining the other side.
In addition to being a moral abomination, it’s unclear what this does for him politically. With this post, Trump will further alienate pro-lifers and divide his own party while doing absolutely zero to win over anybody pro-choice.