Trump-Vance: The Soft-Prolife Ticket
J.D. Vance claims to be “100% prolife” and has often spoken well for the cause, but the recent softening of his prolife position is troubling.
By: Sean Fitzpatrick, originally published July 18, 2024, Crisis Magazine/Opinion
After surviving an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and glowing in the dismissal of the Florida classified documents case, Donald Trump announced his running mate at the Republican National Convention on Monday in Milwaukee: Senator James David Vance, of Ohio. It is an interesting choice for a few reasons—and not least among them, another instance of the Republican Party’s softer position on abortion.
With Trump’s second term, people are expecting a no-holds-barred administration and were ready for pretty much anything in the veep category, from Ron DeSantis to Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk to Hulk Hogan (why not?). At 39 years old, Senator Vance is a good deal younger than Donald Trump (giving them the widest gap in age of any candidates in history) and he is being hailed as part of the new, fresher face of the Republican Party. And finally, Vance was a staunch and vocal critic of Trump when the New York billionaire first exploded onto the political scene, but he has completed the most extreme about-face imaginable.
J. D. Vance is a Yale-educated former U.S. Marine and has served in the Senate for only a year and a half. But in that time, he has asserted himself against the free-market conservatism that has been a GOP calling card for some time, pushing a more populist, venture-capitalist direction and supporting government aid programs for the poor, having suffered through poverty and domestic drug abuse in his childhood home. He wrote the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which presented an impoverished vision of the white working class as he experienced it in poverty-filled Middletown, Ohio. Vance’s military experience and increasing objections to the U.S.’s interventions in Ukraine also signals the advent of a less aggressive foreign policy, that is, a less interventionalist role for the government as the world’s police. (President Trump’s refusal to succumb to the military-industrial complex is also well known by now.)
Faith immediately brings up the question of what his position is on the hotly contested issue of abortion. Though his past words and record show a consistently, and even strong, prolife stance, there is something of a disappointing or disturbing pragmatism about abortion that has creeped onto the conservative scene—one that Mr. Trump has clearly adopted in order to capture the most votes possible and avoid the stigma of being an extremist. Trump, the Teflon Don, is famous (now more than ever) for dodging bullets.
And the whole Republican Party appears to be falling in line, like a good little party, as evidenced by the recent change in their platform language on abortion, going from a vow to pass a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationwide, to the matter being left to the states. The RNC delegates approved the shift Monday. This position, largely led by Trump, is based on the need to concede to abortion to some extent, or in some instances, for the sake of winning elections, keeping the power, and preventing the Left from swinging the other way.
In Trump’s words, from back in April:
You must follow your heart on this issue but remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly, a nation in decline… Always go by your heart. But we must win. We have to win, we are a failing nation…
Of course, there is logic in this line of thought, but that doesn’t make it right. It is a softer, more moderate position on an issue that deserves no softness or moderation. It is true, nevertheless, that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominees tore down the intrinsic evil of Roe v. Wade and put the decision to legally murder children back in the hands of the states. But that has allowed him to just wash his hands of the blood of the unborn.
And now J. D. Vance is the Catholic on the Trump ticket. Mr. Vance claims to be “100 percent prolife” and has spoken well for the cause, including a desire to see pornography banned as a contributing cause, together with abortion, of an American calamity of isolation, loneliness, and the destruction of families. He campaigned vigorously against the amendment to the Ohio Constitution last November allowing for unrestricted abortion up to birth, and described the passing of that terrible amendment as a “gut punch.”
But now, as his political career is advancing, his abortion posture is retreating. Despite the clear rule of the Church, Vance now sides in favor of abortifacients, as does Trump (no coincidence there), and is leaning more towards the socially-mandated side of allowing abortion in the case of rape or incest or the life of the mother—which is a tremendous contradiction to the claim of being 100 percent prolife. It makes no sense to say abortion is murder and murder is wrong—but we should all turn a blind eye to that fact in certain painful cases.
There was a time when Vance rejected any and all exceptions, saying things such as, “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” But the vice-presidential nominee is clearly taking Trump’s pragmatic lead and “evolving,” as they say, when it comes to abortion.
His softening approach and embracing of “reasonable exceptions” no doubt helped him gain this new national position. Just earlier this month, he said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “On the question of the abortion pill, what so many of us have said is look, the Supreme Court made a decision saying the American people should have access to that medication. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.”
Whether or not it is a positive thing to look forward to J. D. Vance as the vice president of the United States, that’s a shame to hear from a Catholic—especially if he is saying that for the sake of political leverage. While it would be better if less children were legally killed, the ends don’t justify the means of compromising one’s unflinching adherence to Church teaching and natural law to support such a position.
Not only is this a position at odds with Vance’s Catholic Faith, but it is also somewhat at odds with his vision of the American cultural crisis on the Right. Vance told Politico last April,
The really interesting debate that is happening between the establishment right and the populist right is [about] challenging the premise… that things are going really well. On the one side, establishment Republicans believe that the American empire is trending in the right direction; populist Republicans believe that the American empire is on the verge of collapse. The establishment points to falling poverty rates around the world; the populist right points to falling birth and life expectancies at home.
Given Vance’s populist associations, it is an inescapable paradox to say first that some babies should be permitted to die by a pill if their parents so choose, and then to posit that the American empire is collapsing because of falling birth rates. The fall of the American empire is intrinsically connected to the disease of abortion and the cultural corruption it causes by making life itself a disposable thing when it comes to the trumpeted and propagandized priorities of self-service and convenience.
“I am as prolife as anyone,” Vance has written, “and I want to save as many babies as possible. This is not about moral legitimacy but political reality.” This is where vice-presidential nominee Vance is wrong. Abortion is about moral legitimacy, and so is public service. When moral legitimacy and political realities do not align, then the side of moral legitimacy must be taken first and foremost. And though there are goods that can be secured in navigating a skewed political reality, the sanctity of human life must remain sacrosanct in every way.
A Trump-Vance administration would almost certainly result in less abortions and that is a good thing, but that doesn’t make them the prolife ticket. They are the soft prolife ticket, and there should be no exceptions to life. It is, without putting too fine a point on it, a matter of life and death. Donald Trump recently had a brush with death as an assassin’s bullet pierced his ear. Now he and his Ohioan running mate are brushing up against death in their abortion stance just to give an erring population their way and give themselves a path to 270 electoral votes in November.
Is it worth it? To paraphrase the words of that holiest of statesmen, St. Thomas More, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for the White House? Given his hard anti-abortion position in the past, J. D. Vance is most likely acting in acknowledgment of the current state of affairs. And while it is good that he is not openly accepting the tragedy of abortion, it is disappointing all the same. All that being said, Mr. Vance seems like a smart, solid man and well-suited to run for office, and it is encouraging to see a generational shift; but as a Catholic, he needs our prayers just as much (or more) as our support. There is always time for another conversion.
Sean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis and serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Pennsylvania.