First Things Magazine. The last few weeks have offered some encouragement for the pro-life cause. Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska rejected pro-abortion ballot measures, the first such victories since Dobbs v. Jackson—a watershed moment worth celebrating. Moreover, Kamala Harris’s resounding defeat, after essentially running on abortion, offers considerable hope for pro-life politics. Yet despite this, the present moment is one of the most dangerous for American pro-life politics since the pre-Reagan era. If the movement makes the wrong compromises now, it will risk going the same way as Western Europe, where the pro-life cause is effectively dead.
Elon Musk deploys liberty for more sex
— RFK and Mexico City Policy. Edward Feser says there is reason to be skeptical. But we hope.
Under fourteen consecutive years of Conservative government—including most recently a five-year supermajority—at-home and telemedicine abortions were introduced with almost no safeguards in the U.K. Hundreds of millions of pounds were sent to other countries to promote abortion, through organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (based in the U.K.), among others. People have been arrested for praying silently in their heads on the street. Even a law banning sex-selective abortion failed to pass. After losing votes last election primarily to Reform U.K., a party further to the right, the Conservatives have just installed their most anti-woke leader in recent decades. Yet in her shadow cabinet, only two members (out of twenty-two) have anything close to a pro-life voting record.
How did we get here? The answer is simple: by consistently supporting the lesser of two evils at elections, no matter how compromised they are.
Right-wing parties have little incentive to move to, or stay on, the right when they can count on conservatives to vote for them as the “lesser of two evils.” But there is incentive to move left, to win over centrists and left-wing dissidents. The perfect position for them to occupy is therefore just slightly to the right of their left-wing alternative. Right-wing parties have done this repeatedly across the Western world—in Canada and Europe.
The Republican party will go the same way if Christians and pro-lifers become more concerned with stopping the Democrats at any given moment than with building pro-life influence in the long-term. The process is already underway: During his campaign, Trump tweeted that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” while a mere month before election day, his wife Melania released a memoir and video passionately advocating for abortion with “no room for compromise” (indistinguishable from Harris’s extremism). Trump made no effort to distance himself from her position.
Trump delivered on overturning Roe. But now that the question of abortion is back with the states, his pro-choice position is clear. In 2023, he called Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act, which prohibits abortion after six weeks (with exceptions for rape, health concerns, or fetal disability), a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” This year, after pressure from certain pro-life leaders, he pledged to vote against an amendment that would legalize abortion up to viability (or even birth for nebulous “health” reasons). Yet on election day he refused to own even this position, chastising a reporter for enquiring about his vote.
On balance, I believe that Trump’s victory is the better outcome and, if I were American, I would have voted for him. Yet many pro-lifers who voted third party were dragged through the mud and lectured that the immediate goal is to defeat Kamala first, and hold Trump accountable on abortion afterward.
So how is that working out? Not well.
Since Trump’s election, he has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be head of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)—one of the single most important agencies for pro-life politics. Kennedy formerly supported abortion for any reason up to birth and, even after moderating his position this year, supports abortion up to viability. For context, this is still one of the most extreme pro-abortion policies on the face of the earth—the kind of policy that places a candidate beyond the pale—at least, if they are a Democrat. When Mike Pence raised concerns over R.F.K.’s nomination, parts of the Republican base responded with an astonishing level of hostility. The Kamala threat is gone—and yet challenges to Trump’s decisions that threaten unborn children are still met with scorn, if not hatred, from key conservative leaders as well as voters. As an essential constituent of the Republican party, convictional pro-life politicians and voters may not yet be dead, but they are on life support… Continue
Mike Pence Says RFK Jr. Would Be “Most Pro-abortion HHS Secretary in History”
Speaker Mike Johnson says he’d ‘like to’ defund PBS and Planned Parenthood
The Signs and Wonders of Elon Musk
Edward Feser is certainly correct when he writes,
“It is tiresome to keep repeating the obvious, but as long as people keep ignoring it I guess I will have to: It is one thing merely to refrain from pushing a pro-life agenda because of current political realities; it is quite another to push an agenda that is positively contrary to the pro-life position (e.g. Trump’s IVF mandate, or his active opposition even to serious state-level restrictions on abortion). Pro-life Trump supporters need to stop dishonestly appealing to the first as a rationalization for the second.” — Twitter / X
We may or may not be right on Covid-19 vaccines, Big Pharma and Climate Change; we may or may not be right on forms of immigration, taxes, political Liberalism… But can we plot a path to syncretist power by compromising on abortion? Though I did not vote for him (and surely not for Harris-Biden!), I wish President-Elect Trump every success. But what is success in the age of Mifepristone? If leaders cannot be counted on for life at its conception they will only hand us off to worse in the end. Their “liberty” is the liberty of the darkness of this world (Jn. 8:32; 2 Cor. 3:17)
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+ ‘Planned Parenthood Direct’ ‘Telehealth’ App to Circumvent Funding Cuts
+ Trump has flip-flopped on abortion policy. His appointees may offer clues to what happens next
+ Why abortions rose after Roe was overturned
+ 95 percent of all abortions are done for elective not emergency reasons
Is it even possible to ban intrinsically immoral abortion in a land of Enlightenment “liberty” and global depopulation agendas? Most think not. Therefore, but for a miracle, abortion would seem likely to continue sweeping the globe despite the “personal” reservations of particular politicians and anti-abortion groups.
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“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God…
For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; 12 the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” –Rom.13
But as pertaining to the teachings and commandments of the LORD, “we ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Catholic Critique 