The Abortion Movement Just Lost their War on the Unborn

Steven Mosher
November 9, 2016
Reproduced with Permission
Population Research Institute

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump often said, "I'm going to make every dream you ever dreamed about your country come true."

The "dream" of pro-lifers has been an America where the scourge of abortion is no more. That's why they voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers, returning a pro-life majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Come next January, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, a pro-life majority will be seated in the House and the Senate.

Now the American people rarely give the same political party control over the House, the Senate, and the White House. But that it exactly the happy situation that, thank God, we find ourselves in now.

For the first time since 1928, Republicans - we should really say the Party of Life - will control both the executive and the legislative branches of government.

The long stalemate between the Party of Abortion and the Party of Life is now over, and things should begin to move in our direction come January. I expect a number of legislative remedies to our national tragedy of abortion to emerge from the Congress and the White House.

I say this because our new President is a builder, and he prides himself that his projects come in under budget and ahead of schedule. So I believe that he will quickly move to keep the promises that he made to us during the campaign.

Trump will ask the House and Senate leadership to send him legislation defunding Planned Parenthood. Once this is signed, the abortion giant, which has killed over 7,000,000 babies since Roe v. Wade and which spent $38 million in a vain effort to elect Hillary Clinton, will no longer be on the receiving end of federal funding. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars will no longer flow into Planned Parenthood's coffers. The loss of roughly 40% of its annual revenue will surely slow down the killing.

Trump will also back the passage of legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks. He has pledged to sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which will save tens of thousands of lives each year.

Trump has also pledged to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. With its demise will go hundreds of burdensome regulations, including those that brought the Little Sisters of the Poor and other plaintiffs to the federal courts to seek relief from its abortion mandates.

With Trump's support, I also expect the Mexico City policy, first passed by President Reagan in 1984, to be written into permanent law. This will require that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive federal funding to certify that they will not perform, promote, or lobby for the legalization of abortion in other countries.

We will also, again with Trump's support, be able to permanently defund the UN Population Fund. The UN's population control arm has been a cheerleader of China's program of forced abortions and sterilizations from the beginning. We should have no part of it.

There are two potential roadblocks to this rosy scenario. The first is the Senate tradition of filibustering. Sixty votes are required under the current Senate rules to invoke "cloture" and bring legislation to a vote. So pro-lifers will need to keep pressure on potential holdouts throughout the legislative process.

The second is the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, which Obama has sought to pack with justices like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. They insist that the law is merely a "social construct," and that they can "reconstruct" it in almost any way they want.

The Founders would be uniformly horrified to think that their treasured Constitution has been used to justify abortion. It is a great irony that leftwing justices, arguing that the Constitution is a "living document," have turned it into a writ to kill.

That brings us to the most important campaign promise of all, which President-elect Trump has repeated dozens of times on the campaign trail: "I will appoint justices like Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court."

The list of potential justices, some 20 strong, has already been drawn up. I believe that the nomination will be made quickly once he takes office. This will restore balance to the court, and ensure that the hundreds of pro-life laws that have been passed by state legislatures stay on the books. Laws mandating waiting periods, counseling, ultrasounds and, in the case of minors, parental consent have done a tremendous amount of good.

What happens after that depends entirely upon the health of the Supreme Court justices. Sooner or later, another elderly justice - perhaps Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer - will decide to step down.

This will create an opportunity for President Trump to nominate another justice or two. Once a solid pro-life majority is in place, the terrible injustice visited upon us by the Supreme Court in 1973 will be no more. Roe v. Wade will be decisively overturned.

The issue of abortion will be sent back to the states, most of which have laws protecting Life already on the books.

All of this sounds very good, some will say, but can we trust Trump to keep his word?

In the aftermath of a long and vicious political campaign, one in which Trump's opponent relentlessly attacked his character, I do not think it is an unreasonable question.

But I would say that the American people, on November 8th, did not just elect Donald Trump, they elected Vice President Mike Pence, Governor Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson, Father Frank Pavone, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, and all of the dozens of fine individuals who campaigned with him and for him.

He is a visionary leader who has built a tremendously successful business over the decades by hiring talented people, developing a shared plan, and then unleashing them to carry it out. That's what real leaders do, and I believe that he will do the same thing as president.

A long time ago, Abraham Lincoln remarked that America's Founders put slavery on the path to ultimate extinction. With the election of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, I believe that modern-day Americans have put abortion on the path to ultimate extinction.

Thanks to the wisdom of the American people, we now have a generational opportunity to fulfill the promise of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness to all Americans, including the unborn.

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