This Is a Dangerous Moment For the U.S. Pro-Life Movement

By: Calum Miller, originally published November 21, 2024, First Things

The last few weeks have offered some encouragement for the pro-life cause. Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska rejected pro-abortion ballot measures, the first such victories since Dobbs v. Jackson—a watershed moment worth celebrating. Moreover, Kamala Harris’s resounding defeat, after essentially running on abortion, offers considerable hope for pro-life politics. Yet despite this, the present moment is one of the most dangerous for American pro-life politics since the pre-Reagan era. If the movement makes the wrong compromises now, it will risk going the same way as Western Europe, where the pro-life cause is effectively dead. 

Under fourteen consecutive years of Conservative government—including most recently a five-year supermajority—at-home and telemedicine abortions were introduced with almost no safeguards in the U.K. Hundreds of millions of pounds were sent to other countries to promote abortion, through organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (based in the U.K.), among others. People have been arrested for praying silently in their heads on the street. Even a law banning sex-selective abortion failed to pass. After losing votes last election primarily to Reform U.K., a party further to the right, the Conservatives have just installed their most anti-woke leader in recent decades. Yet in her shadow cabinet, only two members (out of twenty-two) have anything close to a pro-life voting record.

How did we get here? The answer is simple: by consistently supporting the lesser of two evils at elections, no matter how compromised they are.

Right-wing parties have little incentive to move to, or stay on, the right when they can count on conservatives to vote for them as the “lesser of two evils.” But there is incentive to move left, to win over centrists and left-wing dissidents. The perfect position for them to occupy is therefore just slightly to the right of their left-wing alternative. Right-wing parties have done this repeatedly across the Western world—in Canada and Europe. 

The Republican party will go the same way if Christians and pro-lifers become more concerned with stopping the Democrats at any given moment than with building pro-life influence in the long-term. The process is already underway: During his campaign, Trump tweeted that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” while a mere month before election day, his wife Melania released a memoir and video passionately advocating for abortion with “no room for compromise” (indistinguishable from Harris’s extremism). Trump made no effort to distance himself from her position.

Trump delivered on overturning Roe. But now that the question of abortion is back with the states, his pro-choice position is clear. In 2023, he called Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act, which prohibits abortion after six weeks (with exceptions for rape, health concerns, or fetal disability), a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” This year, after pressure from certain pro-life leaders, he pledged to vote against an amendment that would legalize abortion up to viability (or even birth for nebulous “health” reasons). Yet on election day he refused to own even this position, chastising a reporter for enquiring about his vote.

On balance, I believe that Trump’s victory is the better outcome and, if I were American, I would have voted for him. Yet many pro-lifers who voted third party were dragged through the mud and lectured that the immediate goal is to defeat Kamala first, and hold Trump accountable on abortion afterward. 

So how is that working out? Not well. Since Trump’s election, he has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be head of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)—one of the single most important agencies for pro-life politics. Kennedy formerly supported abortion for any reason up to birth and, even after moderating his position this year, supports abortion up to viability. For context, this is still one of the most extreme pro-abortion policies on the face of the earth—the kind of policy that places a candidate beyond the pale—at least, if they are a Democrat. When Mike Pence raised concerns over R.F.K.’s nomination, parts of the Republican base responded with an astonishing level of hostility. The Kamala threat is gone—and yet challenges to Trump’s decisions that threaten unborn children are still met with scorn, if not hatred, from key conservative leaders as well as voters. As an essential constituent of the Republican party, convictional pro-life politicians and voters may not yet be dead, but they are on life support.

What can be done, if the primaries and the election are already over? Plenty, if we are willing to adopt a politics of prophecy and not merely of sycophancy. I am not suggesting forgoing strategy for a fruitless principled approach. Rather, other Western countries show that the politics of endless appeasement is not only unprincipled—it is also strategically devastating. Compromise is always necessary in politics, as are alliances with people like the president-elect. But we must beware limitless appeasement just to defeat more immediate evils. That way lies ruin.

Sustaining the pro-life movement will take courage and perhaps losing powerful allies. The separation of powers exists for a reason. Pro-life Republicans should refuse to confirm Kennedy unless he promises robust pro-life policies and pro-life appointees to the most salient senior positions within HHS. This would have been pro-life Republicanism 101 ten years ago. If Kennedy is confirmed with no such assurances, it would signal a profound—and perhaps irreversible—decline in Christian and pro-life influence in American politics.

The American pro-life movement has made unprecedented contributions to the cause around the world, for which we are grateful. But if it wishes to continue its work, both at home and abroad, it cannot make the same mistakes that European pro-life movements have made in secularizing cultures. Skeletons on the trail are not to be ignored—they serve as a warning. And the American pro-life movement must seek to avoid Europe’s dark fate.

Dr. Calum Miller is a medical doctor and a researcher in global abortion policy at the University of Oxford.