In The Washington Post today, Fordham University professor Charles Camosy argues that Trump represents an existential threat to the pro-life movement:
[I]f he is elected president, our opponents on abortion will be able to rightly point out that the anti-abortion movement is led by a misogynist, racist, narcissist who is blinded by his own privilege. Successfully making this case is the only way left for abortion rights activists to stop anti-abortion momentum, but it plays into deeply-held stereotypes of the movement—stereotypes still held by media formed during the culture wars.
Camosy neglects to mention that those “stereotypes” of the single-minded pro-life activist are based on facts. He even writes, “We [the pro-life movement] have almost completed the struggle of disentangling ourselves from the toxic, simplistic, binary culture wars of the 1970s.”
This is false. The pro-life movement still frames abortion as murder. That framing makes it a binary issue by default and therefore lends itself easily to hyperbole: Good and moral people hate baby murder. Bad and immoral people don’t.
This is tempting prey for someone like Donald Trump. If there is anything he knows how to do very well, it’s crafting a sales pitch. Trump understood that he simply needed to repeat a few pieces of boilerplate in order to win the bulk of the pro-life vote, despite being famously squishy on the issue. And it worked. Pro-lifers backed him; they campaigned for him; they even joined his advisory committee. By endorsing Trump, prominent pro-lifers proved their critics correct: They really do prioritize the welfare of fetuses over the welfare of everyone else.