TRUMPISM IS ANTI-LIFE:

First: A stable, secure, properly functioning constitutional republic is an essential precondition of effective protection of the right to life of the unborn.

If there are any who would trade away democracy and republican institutions--who would risk authoritarianism or countenance proto-despotism to any degree--for the sake of real or imagined short-term marginal gains to the pro-life political and legal position, I do not agree with them.

The destruction of our political institutions would leave any pro-life gains without a foundation on which to stand. The state exists to protect life and liberty. Undermine the republic and you undermine the ability of a just community to maintain these basic human rights--and ever to include the right to life among them. Risk democracy and you risk everything; all minor and major political achievements are drowned by the loss of the institutions that enable and undergird them.

Everybody agrees with this precept at some level. I take it for granted that no one would knowingly vote into office an Orbán or a Putin, just because he purported to be pro-life or would appoint pro-life judges. (Though, to be candid, there have been some on American right who seem enamored with such figures.) Most pro-lifers understand that the danger is too great, the harm threatened too irreparable, the perceived gains too illusory and contingent on the very values that such a man would repudiate.

Trump is not, as of now, in the same class as Putin or Orbán. But he does have marked authoritarian instincts and tendencies, is heedless of constitutional and moral restraints on his own power, and has a disturbing cult of followers.

So while you can say that Donald Trump is not (yet) Vladimir Putin, you cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that a man who talks openly about changing election dates, will not commit to the peaceful transition of power, uses the military and police powers to put down dissent, and flirts with running for a third term might push for the country to experiment with very real soft-authoritarianism.

If one rightly judges that Trump is a danger on this score, then that peril for democracy overwhelms everything else. Because if Donald Trump were to attempt to walk Putin's or Orbán's path then it would, among other things, destroy all progress on abortion.

It is eminently reasonable, I submit, to judge a Trump reelection a serious threat in this regard. The pattern is there, the danger is real. These are not liberal delusions. Serious pro-life conservatives (like me) ought to take it seriously. After all, to be conservative is to cherish the republican values of our constitutional order and to seek to preserve, protect, and defend them against all threats, and against all enemies, foreign and domestic. For that constitutional order is what makes all else possible.

Note how far Trump is from embracing these conservative first premises.

Trump is a threat to a stable, secure, republican political order--and thus is a threat to the very preconditions that make the right-to-life of the unborn possible in the first place.

That alone is reason enough for pro-lifers to vote against him.

Second: Trump affirmatively undermines and discredits the pro-life cause and the pro-life ethical position.

He does this in two related ways.

He undercuts the values on which the success of the pro-life position ultimately depends: compassion, respect for others, valuing all human life, and the Golden Rule of do-unto-others. If we lose these values, then the pro-life movement loses. It's as simple as that. Abandon these principles and you abandon the long-run objective.

To embrace Trump is to embrace the opposite of the values the pro-life cause needs to succeed. And because of that, embracing Trump discredits the pro-life message. Nothing persuades negatively quite like the demonstration of hypocrisy.

One of the secondary problems with selling your soul is that it's public. Everybody can see what you've done. And even if you're the kind of person who thinks it's worth it, the vast majority of people disapprove of such bargains. This is literally a fact of the human experience, in all times and places.

Pro-lifers will lose our witness if we embrace a liar, an abuser of power and of people, a racist, a man thoroughly corrupt and incompetent--for the sake of transactional political advantage. Even if it is in pursuit of a just cause.

As Abraham Lincoln put it in his debate with Stephen Douglas,

[P]ublic sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

Lincoln's insight remains sound. In the long run, it matters more how we shape public sentiment concerning abortion than whether we appoint and confirm pro-life judges. For ultimately, that sentiment shapes the judges more than the other way around.

Persuasion precedes policy. No amount of bullying and bluster can bulldoze the right to life into a reality if it is not first written in the hearts of the people. In this respect, Trump affirmatively harms the pro-life cause. He negatively molds public sentiment on abortion. It is not right, but it is true: the pro-life cause and position is tainted by--deemed guilty by its association with--Donald Trump.

What does it profit the pro-life movement to embrace Trump and forfeit its soul?

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