Mixed Pro-Life News and Lessons From Election Night

By: Charles C. Camosy, originally published November 8, 2024, FirstThings.com

There is good news for the pro-life movement from election night. Well-funded and well-placed abortion activists had pride of place in the Harris campaign and, clearly pushed by Harris herself, made the supposed right to engage in the violence of abortion the centerpiece of their effort to get elected. This strategy failed spectacularly. Indeed, it resulted in one of the most resounding electoral defeats in recent memory. It is difficult to imagine a candidate or campaign taking on such a strategy again.

And despite enduring a terrible losing streak with state abortion referenda since Dobbs, pro-lifers recalibrated their strategies and got their first three victories: Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota all rejected their pro-abortion ballot measures. The pro-life movement was dramatically outspent in these battles, yet won nevertheless. According to Ballotpedia, pro-abortionists spent a whopping $118 million in Florida alone and still lost. Countless lives will be saved because of these three outcomes—and these states, along with others that significantly protect prenatal justice, will be able to demonstrate in the coming years that there is nothing inconsistent with restricting abortion and having positive health outcomes for women.

It is also worth noting that, by just over five thousand votes, West Virginia passed a constitutional amendment banning assisted suicide in that state. That, coupled with recent failures to legalize assisted suicide in deep-blue states like Maryland, New York, Connecticut, and Delaware, signals important good news in defense of the dignity of human life, especially as our neighbors to the north start killing people with dementia.

But there’s bad news for the pro-life movement as well.

Support for Donald Trump and the GOP did not translate into pro-life victories. Trump won Arizona, Missouri, and Montana, but all three easily passed their pro-abortion ballot measures. Trump and Republicans dominated in Florida, but voters there nearly reached the 60 percent threshold (higher than what was required in other states) needed to enshrine abortion law into their constitution. We are still losing the battle over public opinion on abortion, even among those many supposed to be our political allies.

Trump and the GOP ran a pro-choice campaign and won big. Republicans took opposition to most abortions and all assisted suicides out of their party platform. Trump pledged government-supported IVF (and even, strangely, called himself the “father” of IVF), called heartbeat bills “terrible,” said on Truth Social that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” and strictly refused to acknowledge that prenatal human beings could be protected by federal law (despite the fact that federal law already protects them from partial birth abortion).

As Calum Miller, a British physician and pro-life activist has warned, this puts the U.S. pro-life movement in a precarious position—one that risks devolving into the situation in which the pro-life movements in many European countries find themselves. If we normalize a constant choosing between the lesser of two evils—if we do not find a way to press politicians to be genuinely pro-life (and not just less bad than “the other side”)—we risk a downward spiral where we’ll be left with managing the decline of pro-life perspectives and never move the needle in a positive direction. Trump has already proposed the idea of pro-choice Tulsi Gabbard as the next president of the United States. Capitulating to yet another pro-choice candidate, Miller rightly suggests, is the kind of thing we must fight with all our might.

But the results of November 5 give us some reason for hope and optimism. A firehose of abortion disinformation has doused the American people since Dobbs—spurred by huge money, corrupt media, feckless politicians, and compromised medical and academic communities that don’t permit meaningful dissent. The result of this has been—let’s face it—a massive, cultural-shifting marvel. But, on the other hand, an entire campaign that tried to build itself around this pro-abortion energy failed spectacularly. The population cannot be more misinformed about abortion than it is right now—and still about four in ten Americans identify as pro-life.

Trump has outsourced the future of MAGA to JD Vance—a man who, despite some disappointing compromises during the 2024 campaign, is deeply pro-life and supportive of social programs for women and families. This portends well for the prospects of what I’ve been calling “Pro-Life 3.0”: a movement that transcends our previous connection to libertarian conservatism and recaptures the heterogenous multi-partisanship of the original pro-life movement.

This movement need not and must not choose between the two people present in the uniquely intimate relationship of pregnancy. And with that in mind, I’ll conclude with two proposals for the pro-life movement going forward from this election.

First, per Miller’s warning, we must not backtrack in the slightest when it comes to lifting up the reality of the vulnerable prenatal child. Our pro-abortion opponents have worked hard and smart to erase her reality from the national conversation. They have shown us no quarter in mounting such attacks and, again, have been largely successful: Our public discourse on abortion is almost totally disconnected from what abortion actually is. With that in mind, we must re-teach the culture in part by prudently, respectfully, but unapologetically employing victim imagery. We must subvert our throwaway culture’s attempt to hide the reality of abortion.

Second, we must take lessons from pro-life feminists in showing that abortion is not good for women—and, indeed, is often and obviously deeply and profoundly contrary to their interests. The pro-life movement needs to pivot to make awareness of unwanted and coerced abortion a central part of our activism, as argued in this recent manifesto. Intimate partner violence, anti-natalist social structures, bro-choice coercion from hook-ups and boyfriends, and more all contribute to a situation in which large percentages of abortions are unwanted or at odds with the values of the woman undergoing them. This is a project that we can share with those who are genuinely pro-choice (not pro-abortion)—the kind of project, I suspect, many will be looking for in the first few weeks and months of the new administration. 

Charles C. Camosy is a professor of medical humanities at the Creighton University School of Medicine and a moral theology fellow at St. Joseph Seminary in New York.