I wrote earlier about the Arizona Supreme Court decision affirming that a recent law allowing abortion before 15 weeks’ gestation did not repeal the 1864 law outlawing all abortions except to save the life of the mother. This set off a firestorm, with Democrats gleefully dreaming of using abortion to win Arizona and paint Republicans nationwide as extremists who want to take us back to the 19^th century (as opposed to the 20^th century, where Joe Biden claims he's living.)

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/11/abortion-arizona/

But as I warned, and as you can see at that link, the ruling is a lot more nuanced than the pro-abortion side would have you believe. This is all due to a complicated tangle of legal issues that legislators will have to address. Of course, that didn’t stop Arizona Democrats from immediately proposing a ballot measure to allow abortion up to the moment of birth, a stance opposed by a large majority of Americans.

My question: How much longer will we allow the Democrats and their media marionettes to keep trumpeting the lie that protecting human life in the womb is a “radical, extremist position,” while claiming that killing babies in the womb up to (and let’s be honest, in some cases slightly beyond) the moment of birth is just “women’s health care”?

Related: Some pro-life groups are angry at Donald Trump for not backing a federal abortion ban. He believes that will lead to Democrats retaining power and not only making abortion legal up to the moment of birth, but also destroying America on many other fronts (hey, prove him wrong.)  Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com hates abortion, too, but he thinks Trump is just being realistic and he makes a couple of points I haven’t heard from other writers.

One is that if Roe v. Wade was overturned because there’s no federal constitutional authority to legalize abortion, then Republicans can’t claim that there’s a federal constitutional authority to ban abortion. It has to be done state-by-state, winning over hearts and minds. This will be hard in the blue states, but nobody said it would be easy once Roe was overturned.

His other point is that to overcome the filibuster, an abortion ban would need 60 votes in the Senate, and there’s no way that’s going to happen. Pushing a ban will do nothing but turn out Democrat voters and give us even more Democrats in the Senate. He urges pro-life Republicans, “Be real, be smart, because the alternative is total failure” which will only cost the lives of more pre-born babies.

Unfortunately, the column is subscriber-only, but if you have a subscription, read the whole thing.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/04/10/calm-down-about-trumps-abortion-position-n2637550

And now, for the record, here’s my commentary on Trump’s statement:

President Trump’s statement on abortion created a great deal of disappointment in the pro-life world.  Despite the absolute fact that he was the MOST pro-life President in our lifetime (better than even Reagan or either of the Bushes) in his actual policies and appointments to the Supreme Court, he may have not understood an important point about pro-life advocates like me. 

Repeal of Roe vs. Wade was never the “Holy Grail.”  We all understood that only returned the decision to the states, and in some states it will mean MORE abortions, while in some like my home state of Arkansas, it means pretty much elimination of this barbaric practice that has resulted in the deaths of over 60 million unborn American children. For us, abortion has never been a political issue, but a moral issue. I often say I didn’t get into being pro-life because of politics, I got into politics because I’m pro-life. 

President Trump has always held to exceptions of rape, incest and physical life of the mother, as do many Republicans and conservatives.  I believe life begins at conception and view abortion in the same way I view slavery — that there is no such thing as an expendable, disposable human being.  EVERY human life has intrinsic worth and value, and there is no person not worthy of protection. 

But to those who would abandon President Trump because his view is not as ironclad as mine, I would remind them that this November, our choice is between a President who gave us a pro-life Supreme Court and many pro-life federal judges, who reinstated the Mexico City policy, who prevented tax dollars from being used to fund abortions, and who was the first-ever President to personally speak at the March for Life – versus the current President who is the most radical anti-life President in history, who believes that killing an unborn baby is “health care,” and who deems it acceptable to end the baby’s life at any time, for any reason, and for any circumstance right up until the moment of birth. 

That makes my choice much easier.  But I will pray that President Trump will come to realize that for many of us, the Roe v. Wade reversal was NOT what we sought. We continue to seek recognition of PERSONHOOD of every human being and therefore protection under the 14^th Amendment.