There are two camps in the anti-abortion movement: Those who see Donald Trump as a traitor who should not get their vote and those who still see him as their unlikely champion.
The rift in the anti-abortion world is only growing more pronounced. The two sides within the movement are not only publicly arguing with each other, but they’re taking shots at Trump too. And they’re extremely over the 2024 campaign, ready to focus on governing rather than Trump’s vacillating rhetoric on the campaign trail.
“I feel like Satan is running his campaign. I’m like, what is going on?” Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist, said. “You don’t get to be pro-abortion and get the pro-life vote, and he is a pro-abortion candidate.”
The Trump campaign defended Trump’s stance on abortion, saying incorrectly that he has consistently said abortion should be left to the states, when in fact that is a position that he has taken in an effort to pull back his rhetoric since the Dobbs decision.
In his two previous presidential campaigns, Trump courted anti-abortion leaders like Johnson. In return, they campaigned for him as he pledged to change the judiciary to overturn Roe v. Wade and to sign a federal 20-week abortion ban into law. They felt, in 2016 and 2020, that they could count on him.
That has since changed.
“My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Aug. 23. Trump says he plans to offer free IVF (and his campaign reiterated to NOTUS his pledge to do so), but he hasn’t outlined how.
In addition, Trump on Thursday told NBC News that he believes Florida’s six-week abortion ban is too short, prompting outrage from the anti-abortion community. His team scrambled to put the fire out quickly, releasing a statement saying that Trump had “not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short” and one day later on Friday, he told Fox News that he plans to vote against the state’s ballot initiative to constitutionally protect abortion rights. (If it fails, that would effectively uphold the state’s six-week ban.)
While this cushioned some of the blow for him — Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser released a statement thanking Trump for “shedding light on how extreme this measure is” — the anti-abortion movement is still disappointed in Trump and his positions on abortion this cycle.
“I feel very used, I feel very played,” Johnson, who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention in support of Trump, said. She told NOTUS she doesn’t know if she’ll vote for Trump in November: “I’m not sure I’m going to know what I’m going to do until I step up to that ballot box.”
While Trump might be trying to moderate his stances on reproductive health issues this cycle, he still routinely takes credit for overturning Roe v. Wade at campaign stops and rallies. He has claimed without evidence that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. And he appointed the three Supreme Court justices who allowed the court to overturn the landmark decision, as well as conservative judges in courts all across the country who have largely upheld statewide bans on abortion that conservative states have implemented.
“It is time for pro-life Americans to unite behind Donald Trump, recognizing that Kamala Harris is a complete radical planning to change federal law,” said Penny Nance, an anti-abortion advocate and president of Concerned Women for America, in a statement.
In a statement to NOTUS, Ben Carson, who served in Trump’s first administration as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, also defended Trump’s record on abortion.
“Donald Trump was the most pro-life President of our lifetime. Full stop,” Carson said, adding that Trump has his full support and “if you are pro-life, I would urge you to do the same.”
Still, the topic has proven to be a political loser for Republicans at the ballot box and a winning issue for Democrats. And Trump’s constant rhetorical waffling on the issue has fueled recent high-profile criticism from anti-abortion leaders.
Lila Rose, another known activist and president of the anti-abortion organization Live Action, told Politico she would not vote for Trump if the election were held now, claiming that “[i]t is not the job of the pro-life movement to vote for President Trump.”
“This idea that you are morally responsible to vote against Kamala Harris by voting for someone like Donald Trump — I don’t buy that. I think the bottom line is that it’s our responsibility to advocate for the issues and the causes we believe in and to urge candidates, if they want our vote, to stand for what is right. No one owns the pro-life vote,” Rose told the outlet. “The vote must be earned.”
Trump did that in his previous campaigns when he created an official coalition of anti-abortion advocates to discuss strategy on how to win the movement’s vote — it was known as Pro-Life Voices for Trump. The former president wrote letters to leaders in 2016 and 2020 “to join this effort and do your part to defeat abortion extremism,” he wrote four years ago. “Instead, we can score a major, historic victory for unborn children and their mothers.”
The coalition does not appear to exist this time around.
Kristan Hawkins, who is president of Students for Life Action and was part of the 2020 board, said she hasn’t heard anything about bringing back Pro-Life Voices for Trump this cycle. She guessed Trump is likely being advised to moderate himself in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
Hawkins said doing so is a “strategic tragic mistake” that leads to the “demoralization … of pro-life voters.”
She still plans to vote for Trump because “more children will die if Kamala Harris is elected president” than under Trump. But she said on X that multiple volunteers for her organization did not want to canvass for him after he said that Florida’s six-week abortion ban “is too short.”
She’s not alone in thinking that politics are Trump’s driving force on this issue right now.
“Unfortunately, we have to swallow hard … and understand, at least according to the polls, that the majority of the public is not with us totally,” said Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a network of crisis pregnancy centers.
Glessner was also part of the 2020 Pro-Life Voices for Trump board but said he hasn’t been approached about bringing it back. He’s been making the case that it’s important to get Trump reelected, but he doesn’t plan to endorse Trump this year.
Even so, the Trump campaign seems confident that he will still get the movement’s support in the fall.
“I think the pro-life base will be there with him regardless. [Six] weeks is too short for most people — even reasonable, pro-life folks,” said one person close to the campaign.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, told NOTUS in a statement that Trump “has been consistent and clear: the issue of abortion should be decided by the people in their respective states, not by the federal government in DC.”
Some anti-abortion advocates believe Trump should not have to be responsible for outlining the anti-abortion movement’s vision from the campaign trail.
“Articulating pro-life principles, that’s my job,” said Frank Pavone, president of Priests for Life and former co-chair of the 2020 Pro-Life Voices for Trump. “His job is to appoint the right judges, sign the right laws, veto the wrong law and, you know, do his job as president.”
It’s important, he told NOTUS, that the movement be “politically savvy” and vote for the candidate that best aligns with its principles — and that’s Trump, he argued.
“Campaigning and governing — two different things, right? Usually, the difference is that the campaign promises are lofty, and the governing is, you know, minuscule by comparison. But I think on this issue, it’s going to be the other way around,” Pavone said. “A lot of the rhetoric right now is born out of fear. But once you’re in office, especially in the case of President Trump, he doesn’t have to run again, he can’t run again. So … I think we’re going to find the governing on this issue, especially, going to be better than the campaign,” Pavone said.
As for why the campaign doesn’t appear to be restarting Pro-Life Voices for Trump specifically, Pavone said the campaign “has organized the coalitions a little differently,” and the anti-abortion side is “under the umbrella of overall kind of faith engagement or faith outreach.”
The coalition Pavone referenced is “Believers for Trump,” which the Trump campaign pointed NOTUS to as well. It is a group within the campaign whose goal is to “engage with our communities and congregations to spread the word about President Trump’s positive vision for religious liberty and our country.” The group also touts Trump appointing “three Supreme Court justices to defend our religious liberties, provided equal protections to people and businesses of faith, and made decisive actions to promote life.”
Polls continuously show that Americans support abortion access. A May Reuters/Ipsos survey found that more adults believe Democrats have better plans for abortion policy than Republicans, and 61% said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who supports laws that ban or severely restrict the procedure. And an August New York Times/Siena College poll found that even as Trump changes his position, voters say they trust Harris more on abortion by 24 percentage points.
One thing is clear: As frustrations over Trump’s stance on abortion continue, anti-abortion leaders are already discussing what politicians could take up the mantle in 2028. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sen. Tim Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio are names that are being floated, as NOTUS previously reported.
“I’m ready for Trump to be done,” Johnson said. “I think we can go back to a more dignified political battle, but he’s going to have to get out of the way, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to the Trump era being over.”
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Oriana González and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS.