By any measure, the bygone days of the Biden administration were dark ones for the pro-life movement in America: no position seemed too radical, and no progressive agenda—from gender ideology to the criminalization of public, peaceful pro-life witness—was left behind. In a strange way, however, the very strides that this administration made towards the dystopian nightmare of left-wing ideology were what sealed the Democrats’ defeat; their resounding repudiation at the ballot box last November—what Barack Obama might have called “a shellacking”—has given the incoming administration a clear mandate for change: that is, for a return to sanity.
To some extent, this return represents a “reset” to 2020, when Trump left office. But, in many ways, the four intervening years have not only allowed President Trump to pick up where he left off, but to undo the progressive advances of the previous administration in permanent ways which will reflect the broad, deep, and sane consensus that quietly subsists, in the United States, at a remove from the media’s misleading signals. To take but one example, a New York Times/Ipsos poll recently showed that almost 80 per cent of respondents approved of Trump’s so-called “ban” on biological men from participating in women’s sports. In this case—and so many others—the advances of social progressives were all Pyrrhic victories: their gains only made the reaction to them more forceful and definitive.
There is no better example of this phenomenon than the infamous Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which stymied almost any political progress for the pro-life movement in the United States for half a century. But this victory did not settle the issue: instead, it molded generations of pro-life Americans, setting for them the concrete (but altogether improbable) goal of having this decision overturned. With the Dobbs decision in 2022—and the conservative composition of the Supreme Court that it required—a new chapter in the American pro-life movement began, and the debate about life issues has been placed permanently on a footing more favourable to the defenders of the unborn.
The last election proved as much: the overturning of Roe gave Kamala Harris—who had, of course, personally persecuted pro-life activists during her time as an attorney general in California—the ability to “run on” the issue of abortion in a way that no recent Democratic candidate ever has. As a woman, the perceived ability to connect this position to her own biography gave her a further advantage. But, in spite of all of these apparently auspicious conditions, the rejection of the Democrats’ extremism on abortion was unambiguous.
Thus, if the re-election of Trump constitutes a reset to 2020, it now also gives the Republican president three things: experience, momentum, and a new sense of purpose. Washington’s permanent bureaucracy, which has been an entrenched features of American government since Woodrow Wilson, has withered with Trump’s opening gambit to audit the agencies which are in theory—but not in practice—within the purview of the executive branch. By pairing deep cuts with targeted executive orders imposing sane policies on everything from Pride flags and pronouns to biological sex and international aid, the second Trump administration has left little wiggle room for a progressive (and, therefore, hostile) civil service to undermine his agenda.
A second Trump presidency pairs this deep knowledge of the so-called “deep state” with the winds of a recent election at its back. The first month of this administration has seen a flurry of activity, a “flood-the-zone” approach to policy that not only turns the myopia of a given media cycle to its advantage by moving simultaneously on many fronts, but also allows further policy victories to slide inside the grooves that these bold actions create. Add to this the sense of mission with which the new administration is clearly imbued—fostered, among other things, by a pair of attempted assassinations—and one has the makings for a truly transformative moment in American history, one which wouldn’t have been possible had Trump’s second term followed immediately on the heels of his first.
The opportunities that this moment affords are truly unique, which is why American pro-lifers must work to push this administration even further towards a complete and uncompromising pro-life position. Last year, for instance, the Republican Party removed, from their platform, a commitment to seek a national ban on abortion—a position consistent with Trump’s pledge, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, to return the issue of abortion to the states. Both the removal of this policy plank and the stated position of deference to the will of state legislatures could be seen as defensible political maneuverings, especially in an election year.
The Trump administration’s position on IVF is, likewise, “good politics” insofar as it strikes a pro-natalist stance while removing a boogeyman from the rhetorical arsenal of the president’s opponents. But unlike the plausibly defensible maneuvering on questions of public platforms and stated policies, support for IVF—a morally dubious practice that raises more hope than it fulfills and destroys far more human life than it actually brings into the world—is unacceptable for a genuine, coherent pro-life administration. While there is much for pro-lifers to praise in President Trump’s second term so far, support for IVF is an immoral position that quickly needs to be reversed before it is reflected in any concrete policies.
But an administration as bold and mission-driven as this one should aspire to more than a position on life issues which is free from contradictions. Trump should use his mandate and his momentum to move the American electorate into places which seem to be political costly, but which are, in the end, morally necessary. In the waning days of Biden’s presidency, a statement was made in support of what has long been the “white whale” of the progressive movement, the Equal Rights Amendment. Trump should apply force where Biden faltered, and make one of the signature marks of his legacy the passage of a constitutional amendment: not the odious ERA, of course, but the Human Life Amendment, which would enshrine nationwide legal protection for the unborn from the moment of conception.
There is no reason not to hope and pray for this outcome and, in the meantime, to petition the Trump administration to embrace the pro-life position more fully than it already has by pressing for the ratification of the Human Life Amendment. The adoption of this amendment would represent not only a political sea change but a moral conversation as well; although such a move might seem unlikely now, the overturning of Roe was also unlikely. History is always on the march, and the arc of the moral universe should bend toward the justice to which it is said to tend. Now is surely the time to accelerate this metaphorical flexure, and to end—first in America and then beyond—the brutal practice of prenatal infanticide.
