When, on the morning of Nov. 6th, the results of the American presidential election were clear, pro-lifers in the United States—and around the world—breathed a collective sigh of relief, as Donald Trump emerged as the victor over his rival, Kamala Harris. Of course, those same pro-lifers also had reason to be disappointed with the way that Trump campaigned. He disavowed any plans for an abortion ban at the federal level, even though his opponent repeatedly promised to do the opposite by, as she put it, “codifying” Roe v. Wade via legislation. Trump also pledged to provide federal funding for IVF, a process through which human beings at the embryonic state are both procreated and destroyed, or simply left to languish in the limbo of indefinite cold storage. Finally, Trump stated that he does not oppose abortion in the vanishingly rare cases where unborn children are conceived in the context of rape or incest. No politician who adopted such stances could be described as “pro-life.”

And yet, despite these significant compromises, Trump still convincingly lays claim to being the most pro-life president in American history. He expanded the Mexico City Policy to more comprehensively block American tax dollars from being used to promote abortion abroad. Trump was the first president to address the American March for Life in Washington, D.C., in January of 2020. And, during his first term, Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court—all of whom would go on to support the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision of 2022. That victory, along with a host of other socially conservative policy positions and ad campaigns clearly prevented significant attrition in the just-completed election.

Moreover, with a weakening economy, soaring inflation, systemic immigration failures, and an overwhelming sense, according to the classic question of pollsters, that the country is on the “wrong track,” the Harris campaign chose to focus on abortion at the expense of every other issue. Doing so proved to be something of a Pyrrhic victory. It’s true that, as a demographic slice of the American electorate, unmarried women are now the core constituency of the Democrat party. One Obama-era ad campaign—the so-called “Life of Julia”—proudly promoted government services to unmarried women to supply all of the forms of support that have been traditionally provided by fathers and husbands. But having successfully catered to a demographic—which they have also made dependent—the distance between these “brides of the state” (as one commentator has called them) and the members of normal, healthy families only grow more stark.

This divide is one reason why this was Trump’s support was so broad. To take just one widely-cited data point, he won Catholic voters by 18 per cent (58 to 40), a metric which does not even delve into tell-tale details such as weekly church-attendance. But the Harris campaign was not just radically out of touch: it was simply radical. Few voters likely remembered that Harris was the district attorney who, instead of bringing charges against Planned Parenthood for the gruesome practice of selling the remains of aborted children, instead prosecuted the undercover members of the Center for Medical Progress who had revealed this abhorrent discovery; but long memories of this kind were not necessary to discern the extremism that her candidacy represented. As one of Trump’s ad campaigns concluded (apparently to great effect): “Kamala is for they/them; Trump is for you.”

During a second Trump administration, American pro-lifers must continue to advocate on behalf of the unborn. But they must also undertake the hard work of “winning the argument” beyond the realm of politics. Now that the legal question of abortion has become a political football for state and federal legislatures, the hearts and minds of neighbours and friends is the place where the pro-life cause can be advanced in a new and powerful way. The law is, of course, a teacher, and statutory changes can (and do) sway public sentiment. But before such a teacher can instruct the United States, many more years of groundwork evidently will be required.

Such a victory may be long in coming but, when it does, it will be won not only for America, but for the world. For no civilization can tolerate prenatal infanticide and thrive—nor, for that matter, can it embrace euthanasia and assisted suicide, as Canada has so infamously done. We have reason to hope that the success of social conservative causes in America that one may expect to enjoy in the coming years will prick the Canadian moral conscience such that we will avoid the disaster which our iniquitous policies have invited. There is still time—but time is short.