NO JUSTIFICATION:

For one, the argument treats treats gaining conservative justices as so important that they trump to any other end or goal. The reasons for this judicial myopia are deep and important within the pro-life world. No pro-lifer can say that Supreme Court opinions simply do not matter, for reasons that are obvious. But ironically, shouting "The Judges!" as a political clincher deepens the very doctrine of judicial supremacy that Roe and other similarly bad rulings have exacerbated. Pro-lifers should play a role in deflating the Supreme Court's singular power over American political life: The use of such power to enact social change has exacerbated tensions in American society, and undermined the conditions for long-term stability and peace.

But the claim also rests upon a highly contentious and narrowly selective account of the consequences of getting the justices we want.

What do I mean? Let us think for a moment about the effects of a Trump/pro-life alliance beyond the Courts. For one, supporting Trump means that every Republican candidate going forward need only offer the thinnest of overtures to pro-lifers to win their support, and that there will be nothing conservatives can do if such candidates do not deliver. If Trump were to be nominated and fail to appoint conservative justices, the logic of the "Dumb and Dumber" argument would mean that there could be no reprisals. The idea that there is a chance the Republican nominee elects better justices because he says he will do so is impervious to any kind of falsification, and as such, eliminates any kind of meaningful political reprisal against the party that fails in its pro-life duties.

To put the point differently, it is reasonable in our political system for minority factions to offer their support only in exchange for meaningful attention to their interests and concerns. By supporting Trump, pro-lifers make it astoundingly clear what kind of price the party has to pay to win their votes. The value of the pro-life vote has plummeted, given that Trump's nominal outreach efforts seem to have worked. But the only way to raise that price and extract more meaningful concessions from Republicans in the future is by refusing to do business with them. If pro-lifers really believe that the Republican party is the only vehicle that they have in American political life to reach their ends -- which is what the "Dumb and Dumber" argument rests upon -- then they should absolutely refuse to support this candidate on the grounds that abstention is the only way of keeping the value of their vote up in every subsequent election.

On one level, I really get it: Having deep and abiding moral commitments to the cause of life might mean an irrational, utterly foolish willingness to continue to be abused in such manner by the only party who will at least invite you to their cocktail parties and fundraisers. But pro-lifers lose every ounce of their future leverage over the party by accepting Trump.

In normal conditions, I could easily see pro-lifers voting for non-optimal candidates on the basis of the likelihood of political pressures making them more pro-life than their instincts might otherwise lead them to be. This was, for what it's worth, a huge part of my argument for supporting Mitt Romney in the general election last time around. There were many questions about the depths of his pro-life commitments: I defended him on the basis that, even if he himself had intuitions that I disagreed with, he clearly wanted to be a two-term President and needed pro-lifers desperately.

But Romney also was (and is) clearly an incredible family man. His early pro-choice policies were worse than his own personal life. And the importance of that cannot be understated: Romney gave pro-lifers the chance of justices and the rest of it in a package that fundamentally endorsed the cultural conditions which we think are essential for minimizing abortions, namely, stable families.

This case is clearly different. Trump is a walking-anecdote for the various cultural ideologies and trajectories that the pro-life movement opposes. Specifically, by voting for Trump, they endorse someone who in his personal life has not merely lived in, but reveled in the moral atmosphere and commitments that stand beneath our abortion culture.

If abortions happen because of the breakdown of marriage, then there is nothing 'pro-life' about electing someone who is at best a serial monogamist. If the abortion culture has anything to do with the wider degradation of our society's sex and morals -- as pro-lifers have argued it does for as long as I have been alive -- then there is nothing pro-life in endorsing a candidate who has bragged about the number of his sexual partners. It matters that Trump is unwilling to answer whether he personally has funded abortions. It matters a great deal.

Let me be as explicit as possible about what pro-lifers supporting Trump means: It means lending their aid to someone who (with Bill Clinton) was friends with Jeffrey Epstein who was eventually convicted of pedophilia. And Trump knew of it and commended Epstein. I mean, look at this glowing endorsement: "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Think about that for a second: Conservative evangelicals and other pro-lifers have rushed to find any justification they can think of to vote for a fellow who almost certainly knew of pedophilia occurring, and, for all we do know of him, did nothing to prevent it. At the very least, he was not the one who went to the police about it. That pro-lifers have been reduced to this beguiles the mind, to put it gently.

And now Trump himself has been named in a second lawsuit alleging that he engaged in rape of a minor. This one claims to have a witness. That would be incredible for such a case, but would also not be unlikely given the nature of Jeffrey Epstein's parties. I have no position on whether Trump is in fact guilty of such charges: I only know that if we vote for him because "there's a chance" he'll give the world conservative justices, then we should also include in our political calculation that "there's a chance" such unspeakably wicked events happened. In this instance, pro-lifers do not have time to await the justice system to act: We face a vote, both next week at the Republican convention, and in November. We must instead assess whether the strength or weakness of the purported victim's claims justifies the risk of throwing our support behind someone who has been accused of such horrendous acts.

I will confess at this point that it is hard for me to get beyond a raging anger at the fact that pro-lifers are throwing their support behind someone for whom such allegations cannot be treated as naked, political attempts to destroy an otherwise good person's character. Think of it: if it turned out that such allegations are true, would anyone be that surprised given Donald Trump's life and what we know of how sexual immorality works (namely, that it breeds more immorality, not less)?

Again: I am not saying anything about whether these allegations are true. In the court of law, there is a presumption of innocence. But in the assessment of a person's character...past performance leads to future results. Pro-lifers who support Trump can dismiss these allegations as entirely baseless: But on what grounds? Certainly not because of Trump's life history. Or they will have to consider such allegations in assessing Trump's fitness for office, and tell a complicated story about suspending judgment while the judicial process does its thing. I am not the brightest of bulbs, but it sure seems that when explanations are complicated, things are not going well.

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