With Donald Trump’s revision of the Republican Party platform, and the Republican ticket’s vows to veto any federal ban on abortion, many Never Trump Republicans are crowing that Evangelicals were “useful idiots” for Trump. They are enjoying that Evangelicals are now forced to taste the bitter fruit of their compromises.
I don’t think this is the correct read at all. Normally, it’s the ones expressing regret who “got used.” And in this case, the one expressing the nearest thing to regret is Trump himself. It was the power of Evangelical and other pro-life voters that made him propose a list of Supreme Court justices and vow to end Roe if given the chance. Although there was some private reporting that he viewed this mission as futile, it came to pass when he was able to appoint three justices to the Court during his term.
The previous GOP platforms that committed the party to everything from banning abortion at the federal level to passing a Human Life Amendment were, under Roe, somewhat notional promises. They were stage-rounds, not live ammunition. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush both appointed justices who upheld and expanded Roe in the Casey decision. Before Trump, pro-lifers could often feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, only for Lucy to snatch it away. If you asked me which outcome pro-lifers would rather have, either justices uniformly opposed to Roe but a Republican platform committed to states’ rights on the issue, or a Republican platform that was committed to ending abortion but justices who effectively prevented any restraint on abortion, I know which side would win. When the history of these years is written, the headline will be that Roe was reversed, not that the Republican Party’s platform was backsliding. It was Donald Trump who was compelled to do what he was otherwise disinclined to do. Evangelicals, meanwhile, are among the leading critics of the party’s backsliding in the platform. They are the ones exercising true freedom in this relationship, not Trump.
After Dobbs, the pro-life legislative commitments of the Republican Party are live rounds. We’re only just now discovering what the democratic politics of abortion are like in America, and they present real headwinds for the pro-life cause. There are impediments to winning. But, eventually, I believe the unsustainable nature of a below-replacement-fertility culture will begin to put pressure against the practice of abortion as it now exists.