Republican abortion bans are very unpopular. Yet a significant chunk of Republican primary voters—especially evangelical Christians—demand more abortion bans. That’s a challenge for presidential primary candidates, and one they had to confront head-on over the weekend at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Road to Majority conference. (The “freedom” in the name is not the freedom to make your own medical decisions.)
Donald Trump, far and away the frontrunner in the Republican primary, is looking ahead to the general election. He tries to woo anti-abortion hardliners by reminding them of the past, claiming that at a campaign event, “A woman stood up and said, ‘This guy ended Roe v. Wade. How the hell can you go against him?”
That’s Trump’s pitch in a nutshell. He appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to end abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. What more could you want?
The thing is, some of his opponents are looking ahead and saying they’d support more extreme bans than Trump is endorsing. Mike Pence, Trump’s former number two, is an actual evangelical Christian and a longtime zealot on abortion. He speaks the language, and he shares the goal of national abortion restrictions, calling for a 15-week federal ban.
“Save the babies, and we will save America,” Pence said at a Saturday rally. He added, “as the old book says, that many more are with us than are with them.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also spoke at the event, criticizing Trump for saying the six-week abortion ban he had signed into law in Florida was “too harsh.” But DeSantis is the one who looks like he’s engaging in political calculation here, keeping it low-key as he signed an unpopular law he thought he needed for the primary, avoiding the subject of abortion in the early weeks of his campaign, and then suddenly wanting to talk about it as his polling stagnated.
Trump faces continuing pressure from anti-abortion extremists over his refusal thus far to commit to a 15-week abortion ban, though. At a recent meeting with Sen. Lindsey Graham, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, “[Trump told them] that rather than get hung up on 12 weeks, 15 weeks, 16 weeks, his threshold is when the baby can feel pain,” according to a CNN source. They’re going to demand more than that as the primary goes on, but Trump’s goal is to use his role in overturning Roe to maintain support from hardliners while avoiding further commitments on the issue to preserve his viability for a general election. That’s a luxury DeSantis doesn’t have—and Pence, the true believer, doesn’t want.
We are joined by Christina Reynolds of Emily’s List. Reynolds is the Senior Vice President of Communications and Content at the progressive organization that works on getting women elected to office. Reynolds talks about what she is seeing up and down the ballot this election cycle on the anniversary of the outrageous Supreme Court Decision to take away the reproductive protections of Roe v. Wade.
