A Loss for the Unborn
The real losers in the Trump-Harris debate were the unborn.
The recent debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was a circus show of bad policy, lies, and asininity from both sides. Harris kept on telling us that she had “plans,” and Trump did one better by stating he had a “concept of a plan.” Lies were told about cats and dogs being eaten and that no American servicemen were in active combat zones. The whole debate (debacle?) was a disgrace that ought to disgust all disgruntled Americans.
Virtually all serious commentators agreed that Harris was clearly the winner of that debate. Even the fundamentally unserious RFK Jr. agreed that she won on all the main points. Trump came off unhinged with nearly every question he answered and every rejoinder he tried and failed to make. Harris kept on baiting Trump, and he took the bait quicker than a great white shark faced with a bloody amberjack on a fishhook. Only Trump’s most committed boosters had the audacity to claim with just a little blushing that he won.
However, while it is true in a technical sense that Trump was the loser of the debate, I believe that the real losers of the debate were the unborn.
Pro-lifers are being hit with a rude awakening this election cycle, but many of them are still slumbering with pleasant dreams of Dobbs. Trump is definitely the less extreme candidate running for office when it specifically comes to abortion no doubt, and he is the one who appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. That said, more and more pro-lifers are getting out of bed with a splitting headache because they have been slapped in the face by two pro-choice presidential tickets.
The Harris-Walz team is obviously pro-abortion and everyone knows that, but it’s taking a lot of people to understand that the Trump-Vance team is also pro-choice. I’m sure JD Vance still has pro-life convictions, but ever since he got mesmerized with the possibility that he might be the next Vice President of the United States, he’s been distancing himself from those convictions if he ever had them. He expressed his support for access to the abortion pill mifepristone and said that Trump would veto a federal abortion ban, which is completely consistent with what Trump has already said until he refused to commit to vetoing the hypothetical bill and threw JD under the bus. I guess we just have to follow our hearts on the issue.
During the debate, much was said by both Harris and Trump that would disquiet the spirit of the pro-life movement. Now, Trump’s initial response when asked about his stance on abortion wasn’t bad. He started off by highlighting the extremism of Democrats on abortion and how many states will allow the barbaric procedure to be performed up to the ninth month. Some Democrats have even supported leaving a baby to die after he or she is born. The ridiculous ABC moderator tried fact-checking Trump on this by claiming, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.” That fact-check needed fact-checking.
Still, Trump would demonstrate his utter unseriousness on the matter with this following statement:
[T]his is an issue that's torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that's what happened…. Now, Ohio, the vote was somewhat liberal. Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal. Much more liberal than people would have thought. But each individual state is voting. It's the vote of the people now. It's not tied up in the federal government.
First off, he’s just flat-out wrong that “every” liberal or conservative legal scholar wanted abortion sent back to the states. This is plain reality denial. It’s such an obvious lie that it’s amazing that he keeps repeating it. The late progressive Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, did in fact think Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and too far-reaching (she wanted abortion to be protected via a more democratic process), but this is by no means the view of “every” liberal legal expert. The pro-life movement receives no momentum from crap statements like this.
I’m not going to beat up on Trump too much on the whole states’ rights position. Due to the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that no state shall violate a citizen’s right to life “life” and its granting of Congress to enforce this provision, I believe that this would allow the federal government to prohibit abortion. However, the amendment also qualifies a citizen as being one who is “born or naturalized in the United States,” so it is debatable whether it grants Congress this power. I would like to see a Human Life Amendment added to the Constitution to settle this issue, as did the GOP before Trump’s takeover, but that isn’t going to happen soon. Leaving this as an issue for the states is probably the best move that pro-lifers can make at this moment. Still, I think Trump is simply trying to wash his hands of the issue, and he is being completely hypocritical about the states’ rights position because he has attacked states like Florida for having a six-week ban on abortion. Trump has no real pro-life convictions.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, had some outright morally reprehensible things to say about abortion herself though:
And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest. Which understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.
On the rape and incest issue, there are fifteen states that prohibit abortion in some form without exceptions for rape or incest, but they do in cases of the life of the mother. (Notably, there are six states and Washington, D.C. that have no limits on abortion at all). There is room for nuance in the pro-life community over these exceptions, but an unborn human being does not lack humanity simply because it is the product of a rape or an incestuous relationship. But Harris says that it is “immoral” to want to protect the unborn in those cases too, and to make it all the more appalling, she tried to lecture people of faith that there is nothing contradictory between their religious convictions and allowing abortion. She clearly understands nothing about or is indifferent to, say, the rich Christian theology concerning life.
Harris then told an emotionally gripping story about a pregnancy gone wrong and went on to promise that she would restore abortion protections into law. Yet Trump failed to make any effective counterpoint. He said that he would not sign an abortion ban into law and repeated his lie about all legal scholars agreeing that abortion policy is the states’ prerogative.
The ABC moderator asked Trump explicitly if he would support a federal abortion ban, even though he already said, “I’m not signing a ban.” Trump decided to answer this question by saying (accurately I believe) that an abortion ban would never pass in Congress, and then he pivoted to talking about the Biden Administration’s failed student loan forgiveness scheme. When he was pressed on the issue again with the moderator citing JD Vance’s statement that Trump would not ban abortion, Trump gave an ambiguous answer and said that he never discussed the policy with Vance and went back to talking about student loans.
Once Harris started speaking again, she relied on fearmongering by claiming that Republicans are out to ban IVF (which is a complicated issue for pro-lifers), and Trump responded by saying that he has been a “leader” on IVF and cited his opposition to the Alabama Supreme Court for prohibiting the practice. Trump then actually asked a good question at Harris on whether she supported abortion in the late-terms of pregnancy. Harris completely dodged the question. The most she could say about the matter was: “That's not true.”
On a positive note, Trump did not completely stab pro-lifers in the back with his debate performance. But he did nothing to reassure them either. He reiterated that he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban before he decided to send mixed signals about doing so just a few minutes after saying this. He demonstrated that any commitment he had to the pro-life movement was shallow at best when he repeatedly lied about all the legal scholars agreeing on ending Roe. Harris, of course, demonstrated her morally depraved views on the matter of killing unborn children. I thought it was interesting, though, the way she and that ABC moderator revealed their apprehension over supporting late-term abortion. Late-term abortion is happening, but Harris wanted no association with supporting that at all. She and her lackeys even had to go out of their way to lie about the reality of such gruesome things happening at all. I think this just shows that deep in their hearts, they know that there is something seriously evil with abortion—and most Americans know this as well, whether they want to admit it or not.
The bottom line: this debate was a loss for the unborn. The most that could be said is that pretty much everyone wanted to seem like they were on the side of the almost born or recently born, but there is no need to get yourselves into a tizzy over most of those unborn—uh—things. I wonder what those things are?
The pro-life movement is in dire straits, and this election is going to be very harmful to the movement. I have heard people make the somber points that if Harris gets elected, we will continue to see the kind of reprehensible things on abortion that have been going on for a long time. But if Trump is elected, then he will very likely transform the GOP into a moderately pro-choice party. The GOP has already removed any meaningful pro-life position from their platform, and many national representatives and candidates in the Republican Party have cooled it with the old pro-life talk. Pro-lifers are faced with the very real possibility of being politically homeless for a while if Trump is reelected.
The unborn will not be getting any major wins in the short term. If the pro-life movement hopes to make any effective, righteous change, it will have to start thinking realistically and fight play the long game. Again, real change will only come about if the Gospel takes root in the culture. The Gospel is “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16 ESV), and it will take new creations in Christ to cast off their old sinful passions and embrace what is holy and just (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Tough times are up ahead, but if pro-lifers stay committed to principles and submit to Christ, I do believe we can win in the long run.