Trump Addresses Anti-Abortion March for Life

Past Republican presidents who opposed abortion merely sent in video messages or delegated a surrogate to speak in their place. But when President Donald Trump announced last week on Twitter that he planned to speak in front of the group, he made it clear he was intent on solidifying his support with socially conservative voters on the day House Democrats were making their final formal argument for his removal from office.

Roy Hagemyer, 62, a pastor from Mohave Valley, Arizona, who was standing at the corner of 15th Street and Constitution Avenue giving out signs reading “Human Rights Begin in the Womb,” could barely contain his excitement before Trump’s speech.

“The president is going to speak here today, the first time in history,” he said, smiling. “That really puts a lot of horsepower behind our movement.”

Hagemyer said Trump’s support makes him even more optimistic about the future. “I firmly believe that in my lifetime we will see Roe V. Wade overturned,” he said referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that extended federal protections to abortion. “The tide is turning. People are starting to realize abortion is not something we should be doing.”

Trump’s relationship with the anti-abortion movement has been a transactional one since he entered politics in 2016. He has focused his efforts in particular on white evangelicals and Catholics, a critical part of his base in 2016, who could also be equally important in November.

In exchange for the appointment of anti-abortion judges, his unwavering support for Israel and his attempts to protect the rights of students to pray in schools, they have generally overlooked Trump’s own complicated past with the issue and his own history of three marriages and two divorces.

In a 1999 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he described himself as “pro-choice in every respect.” And four years ago this month, leading abortion opponents including Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, wrote a letter urging Iowans “to support anyone but Trump” in the Republican caucus because “on the issue of defending unborn children and protecting women from the violence of abortion, Mr. Trump cannot be trusted.”

That changed once he won the Republican nomination. Dannenfelser led Trump’s Pro-Life Coalition. And evangelical misgivings about Trump, widely voiced during the 2016 campaign, have largely disappeared as a result of his efforts as president.

But a critical editorial last month in Christianity Today, a flagship evangelical magazine, raised concerns in the White House about the depth of Trump’s evangelical support.

More than 80% of white evangelical voters supported him in 2016, and he needs to maintain or increase support in his core base to win in November. At campaign rallies, Trump now routinely talks about mothers “executing babies” and brands Democrats the “party of late-term abortion.”

In fact, late-term abortions are extremely rare and doctors do not kill babies who survive abortions as Trump has claimed.

His aides, like Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, this week were quick to promote him as the “most pro-life president in history.” And hours before Trump took the stage in Washington, Vice President Mike Pence discussed the March for Life with Pope Francis during a trip to the Vatican, another sign that the alliance between evangelicals and Catholics is key to Trump’s continued success.

Trump’s appearance at the March for Life is the most significant moment for the movement since it began in 1974, the year after the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide. His presence signifies just how mainstream he has made their cause, which for years lacked power and resources as Planned Parenthood’s political influence grew.

That concern is hard to remember today. After he won the nomination, Trump wrote to anti-abortion leaders and publicly committed pursuing their core policy objectives, and they worked to elect him.

The political movement to end legalized abortion has become even more interwoven into the core strategy of Republican efforts to reelect Trump in November, by motivating white evangelical and Catholic voters.

“The difference between 2016 and now is how fully the Republican Party has accepted the issue as a driving force at the center of elections,” Dannenfelser said in a phone interview.

“This president is the reason why,” she said. “He took it on, put it at the center of his campaign-fulfilled promises and is putting this cause at the center of his reelection this year.”

Trump has previously addressed the March for Life, but remotely. “He understands that physical presence communicates commitment and attachment,” Dannenfelser said. “Phoning it in is just what it sounds like; it was a signal that the life movement was to be kept at arm’s distance. But no more.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

Trump Addresses Anti-Abortion March for Life

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