When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that I.V.F. embryos were subject to the state's wrongful death statute, it forced the pro-life movement to fully examine the cultural and political implications of its position on unborn children, and pro-life Republicans blinked. They caved, almost instantly, on a core philosophical element of the movement - the incalculable value of every human life no matter how small - and the movement is now standing by or even applauding as Trump is turning the Republican Party into a pro-choice party, one more moderate than the Democrats, but pro-choice still.
While I always respected arguments about the personhood of the baby, I was often frustrated when critics would attribute malign motives to pro-life Americans. But now I'm left wondering how much of the movement was truly real. How much was it really about protecting all human life? And were millions of ostensibly pro-life Americans happy with pro-life laws, only so long as they targeted "them" and imposed no burden at all on "us"?
Philosophically, the movement is breaking. There is no coherent pro-life argument for why a state should prevent women who become pregnant through natural means from destroying an embryo while protecting the ability of families who create an embryo through I.V.F. to either destroy it or keep it frozen indefinitely.
[I]t is probably no coincidence that public support for the pro-life position began a sharp decline after Trump's election. It's hard to argue you're a movement rooted in love when you enthusiastically unite behind a fundamentally hateful man. On Wednesday, Trump reversed his previous position supporting a 20-week ban on abortion; he announced that he would not support a national abortion ban if he wins the presidency, and he said the policy should instead be left up to the states.
Trump's advice to voters was to "follow your heart" and "do what's right for your family, and do what's right for yourself." It's "all about the will of the people," he said. This is the most pro-choice position a Republican presidential candidate has taken since at least Gerald Ford.
I also recognize that many of the critics of the pro-life movement were right all along. When push came to shove, the pro-life position was either secondary to other values or it genuinely was punitively tribal - enthusiastically aimed straight at the supposedly licentious left but ready to be abandoned the instant the commitment to unborn children might endanger the larger MAGA political project. Abortion is the poison pill that Trump doesn't want to swallow.
The older I get, the more I'm convinced that we simply don't know who we are - or what we truly believe - until our values carry a cost. For more than 40 years, the Republican Party has made the case that life begins at conception. Alabama's Supreme Court agreed. Yet the Republican Party can't live with its own philosophy. There is no truly pro-life party in the United States.
