Donald Trump once had the distinction of being the most pro-life president in living memory. In his first term in office, he put into place the Supreme Court judges that overturned the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision which had legalized abortion across the country 50 years before. Roe getting struck down was a ruling no one had expected, and almost no one could even have imagined. Yet, it happened, thanks largely to President Trump.
But in a campaign stop in late August, the former president made quite the reversal. Instead of helping the unborn he pledged to put more babies in harm’s way. He told a crowd at Potterville, Michigan:
“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump Administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment, fertilization for women…. because we want more babies, to put it very nicely.”
He positioned the policy as pro-family, but because abortion is regularly part of IVF treatments, this is far from pro-family. As John Stonestreet explained in a recent Breakpoint.org column:
“As commonly practiced, IVF almost always involves creating multiple embryos, since ‘excess’ embryos improves the chance of achieving pregnancy. In most cases, the embry- os that are created are then screened for ‘viability.’ Those deemed unviable are either destroyed or stored. Embryos are transferred into the woman’s uterus, either one at a time or multiples at a time. If pregnancy is achieved before all embryos are transferred, the rest are frozen, disposed of, donated to medical research, or stored for later use. If multiple pregnancies are achieved, a ‘fetal reduction’ [i.e. abortion] is often recommended and performed.”
By one estimate, more unborn children could be be murdered under Trump’s announced policy than are currently being murdered via legalized abortion. Roughly one million American children are aborted annually, and the estimate is that another 1.2 million unborn children are also intentionally killed each year via the IVF process. Should IVF become free, as under Trump’s plan, there’s reasons to believe that IVF treatments could double, which would also double the death total.
That’s the result of what Trump is promising.
Trump’s personal life, his frequent crudity, and more so, his promotion of homosexuality and gambling, have all been marks against him as a candidate. So the case for Trump has always been that despite his lack in so many important areas, he was still (clearly) the lesser of two evils compared to his pro-abortion Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. However, even while the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is every bit as bad on abortion as her predecessors, this time, with his IVF policy, Trump may have managed the impossible, outdoing Harris’s body count by as many as a million dead children a year. That would make him the lesser of two evils no more.
Does that mean Christians should vote for Harris? Or does it mean that sometimes candidates are just too evil to support, even if they are less evil than their rival?
Picture credit: Lev Radin / shutterstock.com
