Former president Donald Trump is “alienating” his base by adopting progressive language on abortion and distancing himself from pro-life policy, said Lila Rose, an activist and founder of the anti-abortion nonprofit Live Action.
Rose, who has positioned herself as among the Republicans unwilling to excuse Trump’s recent pivot, was interviewed by Politico this week after her social-media posts highlighting Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s rifts with the Republican Party’s pro-life faction went viral.
“If you look at the 2016 campaign, he was much more vocally pro-life than he is now, and he had more public promises to do pro-life advocacy. Now he’s changed his position. And he is not only not saying pro-life things — he’s actively saying he would support pro-abortion policy,” Rose told Politico. “That’s a very important distinction, and no amount of ‘Well, it’s just politics’ cover up that fact.
“Vance has come out and said that [Trump] would veto an abortion ban, that he supports abortion pills, that he supports ‘reproductive rights’ without clarifying what that means,” Rose said, adding that Trump “was behind the RNC platform being weakened on this, which for four decades was strong on life, and now it’s been weakened.”
The activist said that she, as it stands, would not cast a vote for either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. It’s “not the job of the pro-life movement to vote for President Trump,” she said, but it is “the job of the pro-life movement to demand protection for pre-born lives.”
Other Republicans disagree. Political commentator Liz Wheeler said in response to Rose on X that “pro-lifers have a moral duty to vote for Trump because refusing to vote for Trump is a vote for Kamala Harris the most gruesome pro-abortion politician in our country.” Media personality Mike Cernovich said on X that “Republicans held a hotly contested primary. We fought each other. Trump won. Now you vote Trump.”
But Rose said she doesn’t buy the “idea that you are morally responsible to vote against Kamala Harris by voting for someone like Donald Trump.”
“In some cases, you can make the argument that it can be the right move to vote for the lesser of two evils,” Rose said. “But part of our job is not to just accept whatever position we’ve been handed — especially from a politician who, in the past, has counted on our vote and has indicated that he is pro-life [before] changing his position. It’s our job, if we want to be an effective lobbying group in any way, to demand more and to say, ‘If you want my vote, I need to see more from you.'”
“This is how politics works,” she continued. “This is how any advocacy or movement works, whether it’s gun rights or immigration rights or whatever the advocacy group is fighting for. If you will always be happy to support a candidate provided that they are just a fraction better than the next candidate, you will never achieve your goals for the group that you’re fighting for.”
Either Trump lacks principle on the pro-life issue or he’s getting “bad advice” from campaign staffers, Rose said. Most pro-life groups still support Trump’s candidacy despite him saying he would veto a national abortion ban and would not block access to abortion pills.
If Trump “came out swinging for life” in September or October, he might rally the faction of pro-lifers currently on the fence, Rose said.
“If he wants to galvanize his base, he needs to stop trying to pander to Kamala Harris’ base,” she said, “because they’re never going to vote for him anyway.”