The biggest news from Tuesday’s vice presidential debate didn’t happen on the debate stage: For the first time, Donald Trump unequivocally pledged to veto a federal abortion ban and said he would not support one “under any circumstances.”
It didn’t take long for anti-abortion activists to say what they’d been fearing for a while now: They don’t have a true ally at the top of the Republican ticket.
“President Trump’s commitment to veto a federal abortion ban is not a pro-life position, but a pro-abortion position that cannot be supported or defended by anyone who is truly pro-life,” said Mark Lee Dickson, an anti-abortion activist who helped pave the way for Texas’ citizen-enforced six-week ban. “This statement by President Donald J. Trump may have just cost him the 2024 election.”
“I have not given up on President Donald J. Trump,” Dickson added in a text message to NOTUS, but “many leaders in the pro-life movement (including myself) are having a hard time defending him.”
Advocates have hoped that Trump’s abortion stance was squishy at best and that he would ultimately sign a ban if one came to his desk. Doubts about his commitment to the anti-abortion movement are not new, but never before has Trump been so clear regarding his position on a federal ban. However, some anti-abortion leaders say the alternative — Kamala Harris — would be an existential threat to the movement if she were to win.
“I think there’s such a clear contrast that pro-life people would be making a mistake if they take this one position … of President Trump and use that as a reason to, quite frankly, give Kamala Harris the White House,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. “Kamala Harris is a one-trick pony. Her only issue … in this campaign is abortion. So she’s going to use, if she gets elected, her four years to promote and perform as many abortions as possible.”
Back in 2016, when he became the official GOP nominee, anti-abortion advocates were weary of the man who once said he had been a Planned Parenthood donor. Ultimately, it was his vice presidential pick at the time, Mike Pence, who convinced them to support the ticket.
But with Pence gone, most anti-abortion leaders are no longer directly involved with the campaign. Sen. JD Vance is trying to fill that void, saying during the VP debate that Republicans needed to “do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back” on abortion, but people in the movement say there is still a vacuum.
“It’s tragic that the pro-life community no longer has an ally at the top of the ticket who can articulate why we fight for the life of the most innocent,” said Marc Short, a longtime aide to Pence and his former chief of staff.
But Short, a Trump critic, told NOTUS over text there is “no evidence that pro-life leaders are willing to distance themselves from Trump.”
When asked if she had heard from voters and volunteers whether they would not vote for Trump as he moved away from the anti-abortion movement, Tobias said, “Quite frankly, no. I’m just not seeing and hearing a lot of it.”
“There are certainly pro-lifers who are saying, ‘I wish Donald Trump were stronger,’ yeah, but they’re still going to support him,” she added.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told NOTUS in August that Trump’s attempt to moderate himself on abortion is “not changing any votes. If you’re voting on abortion, if you want to see more abortions, you’re voting for Kamala Harris, hands down. There’s no debate. You’re not going to change any voter minds when it comes to abortion.”
Similarly, Lila Rose, the head of the anti-abortion organization Live Action, has encouraged her followers not to vote for Trump. Rose posted on X that his current stance abandons “his most reliable voters” and “will win no one new.”
“This is a perilous political mistake and absolutely tragic for the country and the children who have no one to fight for them,” Rose added.
Anti-abortion activists, who say they will continue to criticize him while they prepare to vote for Trump, are hoping that in the month left before Election Day, he will prioritize them instead of trying to coax voters they say he can’t get anyway.
“Even if his actions are delayed, may his words point us in the right direction, as he navigates us to become a nation learning to respect human life at our earliest stages of existence,” Dickson said. “We need Trump to be the based leader we all know he can be.”
Anti-abortion advocates are still holding on to what Trump, the self-described “most pro-life president” in U.S. history who was able to install justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, has not said: He might enforce the Comstock Act as a national ban, he might firmly oppose federal funding for abortion and he might appoint anti-abortion people to his cabinet.
Shortly after Trump said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the Harris campaign said that no matter what he says, “[v]oters aren’t stupid, they heard Trump brag about killing Roe, heard him when he called for ‘punishment’ for women and heard him call the extreme Trump bans he made possible ‘a beautiful thing to watch,’” Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Abortion is one of the leading issues for Democrats this election cycle, with polls showing that voters trust their party more on the topic than they do Republicans. Ironically, Trump’s position on abortion has the two sides of the issue agreeing with each other.
Abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates right now “are two sides of the same coin,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly known as NARAL, told NOTUS. “We’re both saying he’s lying in different ways.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.