As the anti-abortion movement grows increasingly frustrated with Donald Trump, they are turning to his No. 2, Sen. JD Vance, for help.
Trump’s criticism of six-week abortion bans, his support for IVF (with a promise to make IVF coverage free), and his public stance that abortion is now a settled issue left to the states have made some anti-abortion advocates urge their followers not to vote for the GOP ticket.
But where Trump can waffle and be vague about policy, Vance can be specific — which has given some peace of mind to anti-abortion voters.
“I know that there is a lot of concern here in this room that cultural conservatives are no longer welcome in the Republican Party,” said Vance last week at an event held by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a prominent Christian anti-abortion group. “That is absolutely not true. You are always going to have a seat at the table in the Republican Party of this president and of his leadership.”
“I stand here as the vice presidential nominee saying the Republican Party is proud to be the pro-life and the pro-family party,” he added.
Abortion is a politically fraught topic for the GOP ahead of November, and anti-abortion advocates have said Trump is only backing away because he’s being advised by strategists and consultants to do so. That leaves groups looking to Vance, as his running mate, to tell them what’s real and what’s just election year talk.
“I think [Vance] is a person you can believe that that is his intention, and I think if you look at President Trump’s track record, he was very concrete in what he did, appointment of judges,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy of Students for Life of America. She told NOTUS that anti-abortion leaders are having “good” conversations with Trump’s team and that the former president has “good people around him.”
“He is a person who makes a deal and keeps a deal,” she added.
While Vance’s words might have calmed the nerves of some, others wish it was coming from Trump directly.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis said it’s “self-evident” that Republicans are the anti-abortion party. “Trump could say that with absolute conviction, and if that would assuage [anti-abortion advocates’] concerns,” then he should say it and “repeat it frequently and resoundingly.”
“It’s not a bad thing” to hear from Vance, said Thomas Glessner, president of the anti-abortion group the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. But it “doesn’t quite go as far as people like me would want. I’d rather have Trump stand up there and say, ‘Listen, there’s going to be a seat at the table for you.’”
Glessner, who has said he’s not endorsing Trump but believes he’s a better option than Kamala Harris in November, added that “people would feel better if they heard it from Trump.”
Even if Trump loses the election, Vance is held up by anti-abortion groups as one of the future leaders of the movement beyond 2024. His ability to connect with anti-abortion voters is an “asset,” said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“There’s no path to victory for the Republican presidential ticket” without anti-abortion voters, Reed said.
“JD is a real asset to the president, and I think he’s a real asset to this ticket, and I know he’s a real asset to our movement, our pro-family and pro-life movement,” he added. “He’s politically unafraid, you know? He has core values. He knows what he believes. He knows why he believes that. He can defend it. He can express it. He leans into it, and he’s not intimidated or afraid.”
Trump’s polling with women voters has lagged behind Harris’, and Democrats hope that abortion will galvanize voters in the fall. Trump, seemingly aware of the gap, posted on Truth Social last weekend in all caps that women “WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”
This isn’t the kind of message anti-abortion advocates are clamoring for. But they do trust what Vance said during his Faith and Freedom Coalition speech about giving the movement a “seat at the table” in a Trump administration.
“Trump has the most pro-life record of any president of my lifetime, and I think that’s an asset,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS. “I would just say to him, like, ‘I think you ought to run on your record.’ … I just think backing away from life and his record … I’d counsel against that.”
Voters “may be disappointed” by how Trump “may not be articulating his pro-life views in as forward-leaning fashion as they would prefer,” but they understand Harris isn’t going to do anything for them, Reed told NOTUS.
To keep voters and volunteers in the movement excited, Trump and Vance need to talk about their anti-abortion record because Republicans cannot “assume” that the anti-abortion vote will show up, Hamrick said.
“This is an election, in my view, in which those so-called traditional constituencies are not locked down,” Hamrick added. “I really feel like the pro-life story is part of that, where to earn a vote, you’re going to need to talk to people about what they care about and be articulate about it, you know? And so, I really do think that the pro-life vote is part of that story of people’s vote being available. There’s not knee-jerk support.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.