POLITICS
If Harris And Walz Win
Where the pro-life movement lost its way
If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz win, historians will point to two reasons: concern about democracy if Trump won and a backlash to the loss of abortion access.
Trump leveraged the power of the presidency to commit the kind of election rigging that Republicans allege, from pressuring Georgia election officials to “find” votes to asking DOJ officials to declare the election compromised so that Republicans could do the rest. Anyone who can see past partisanship can see Trump’s propensity to cheat at democracy and hide it behind false accusations and deluded grievance.
But even Trump recognizes Roe’s demise as the bigger problem for his campaign. He tried to back off his pro-life position as far as he could without alienating his Evangelical cheerleaders. I’m not sure anyone except a few Never-Trump Evangelicals bought it. Too little, too late, in 2024 anyway.
By 2024, the problem underneath the problem for Trump’s campaign became clear for many moderate and conservative voters. The pro-life movement forgot that women are people, too. They spent so many years insisting on fetal personhood and building elaborate protections for the unborn that they lost sight of the mothers. They banned abortions “with exceptions for the mother’s…
