Trump's 'Terrible' Damage to the Pro-Life Cause

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : So if Trump does a good thing, whether it's the appointment of justices or [moving] the embassy to Jerusalem, cheer him on.
69% : "I always tell people: Do not let your testimony be disqualified for the prize, meaning you can't say just because Trump did it, it's all good all the time.
61% : "Trump is still kind of like an incumbent in the race.
54% : " Trump's campaign has, according to the Washington Post, "assured some conservative leaders in private meetings that the former president only criticized strict state abortion laws as a means of attacking" DeSantis.
53% : " Still, Vander Plaats insisted that Trump -- now registering at 54 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of Iowa -- will underperform on caucus night.
45% : Trump "hasn't used the number [15 weeks], but painful, late-term abortion, by all the science that we know, begins around 15 weeks," she said. Pro-life groups back a 15-week limit both to draw a contrast with Democrats in the short-term at the federal level and to lay the groundwork for eventually stopping the particularly barbaric practice that is late-term abortion, as they did with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.
43% : Asked during a CNN town hall last week whether he thought Trump was pro-life, DeSantis was surprisingly blunt.
43% : " "It could be state or it could be federal," Trump added.
43% : As Iowans prepare for Monday's caucuses, Vander Plaats' message to pro-lifers is that they should back DeSantis because Trump "presents our highest hurdle of winning in 2024."
40% : Vander Plaats, however, insisted Trump is singular and other GOP politicians wouldn't get away with similar departures from pro-life orthodoxy.
39% : That means the majority of the voters still want an alternative to Trump.
37% : But even if such a law were enacted a decade from now, it would save fewer lives than the state-level pro-life laws that are in effect right now -- laws that Trump is now actively turning GOP voters against.
35% : " DeSantis and his supporters have sought to use the comments to drive a wedge between Trump and his voters in Iowa, to little effect.
31% : "Don't ask me what President Trump thinks."
31% : The institutional pro-life movement has also been reluctant to sharply criticize Trump, especially as his nomination has appeared more certain.
31% : But if Trump waffles on the sanctity of human life, or calls a political opponent a name or is vulgar in a speech, you need to be willing to call him out on that.
29% : Trump suggested that DeSantis' slide in the GOP primary polls was partly due to his signing of Florida's heartbeat bill, a spurious claim that fails to account for the fact that such laws are still popular with a majority of Republican voters.
28% : Trump would only need to persuade a small number of voters that such laws are "terrible" in order to play a decisive role in overturning one of the most important pro-life laws in the country.
27% : Leading in Iowa by more than 30 percentage points, Trump clearly feels safe positioning himself on the issue for not just New Hampshire's more moderate Republican electorate, but a general election against President Joe Biden.
27% : " Does embracing Trump hurt the moral and cultural witness of pro-lifers?
26% : But that point may not persuade many voters who see polls showing Trump tied with or ahead of Biden.
23% : If Trump comes to define what it means to be pro-life for Republican voters and politicians -- and persuades a significant number of them that heartbeat laws are a "terrible thing" -- that in and of itself would be catastrophic for the cause, not just in Florida this year but nationwide for years to come.
19% : SBA Pro-Life's Dannenfelser, for example, demurred when asked if Trump's calling a heartbeat law "terrible" rendered the frontrunner not pro-life.
19% : " Dannenfelser acknowledged that Trump hasn't specifically endorsed a 15-week limit, but she interprets his attacks on Democratic backing of late-term abortion as support for a 15-week limit.
18% : " But when Trump had the opportunity publicly to do just that at a Fox News town hall Wednesday night, he doubled down on his criticism of state heartbeat laws instead.
14% : When Nikki Haley was asked at the CNN debate on Wednesday if she agreed with DeSantis that Trump is not pro-life, for example, she dodged the question.
14% : And even when it comes to abortion, it doesn't appear the DeSantis campaign has deployed serious resources to knocking Trump on the issue.
13% : While DeSantis has been hitting Trump on this specific issue in various TV and campaign appearances for months, he has generally been reluctant to forcefully go after the frontrunner.
10% : In a September interview on NBC News' Meet the Press, Trump said that DeSantis' signing of a bill that generally prohibits abortion later than six weeks of pregnancy, with several exceptions, was "a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.
10% : Trump has "given a gift to the left to weaponize that against pro-lifers, and that's wrong," DeSantis said at a CNN debate with Nikki Haley on Wednesday night.
5% : But just a couple months later, after Trump trashed the Florida law, another Des Moines Register poll asked likely Iowa caucusgoers if they agreed or disagreed with Trump that "passing a 6-week abortion ban like Iowa's was a 'terrible mistake.'"

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