Why we must hold politicians to account on abortion

The GOP pivot away from the pro-life movement continues apace.

Former President Donald Trump declared, shortly after the abortion-themed Democratic National Convention, that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” a euphemism for abortion. Then, earlier this week, vice presidential candidate JD Vance told NBC’s Meet the Press that if re-elected, Trump would veto any federal abortion restrictions that come across his desk.

“I can absolutely commit to that,” he affirmed. “I mean, if you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it.”

In response, many pro-life leaders spoke out, calling on Trump and Vance to recommit the GOP ticket to pro-life policies and to correct course. While most pro-life voters are committed to voting for the Trump-Vance ticket, it is increasingly to avoid the disaster of a Harris-Walz administration – and there are growing fears that the GOP’s pro-abortion pivot could become permanent if prominent pro-life leaders do not push back.

This pushback has been met with fury from many Trump-aligned activists, who are accusing pro-lifers of losing sight of the big picture. Pro-lifers, of course, recognize that Trump will not run on a pro-life platform – but many are concerned that he has begun to actively campaign in the opposite direction.

The vitriol being directed at pro-life activists such as Lila Rose of Live Action for defending pro-life principles has been nothing short of staggering. Right-wing activist James Lindsay, for example, wrote on X:

Pro-life is a position, and a reasonable, moral, and admirable one. Pro-Life Inc. is *probably* a Communist front made to force conservative losses and to absorb huge amounts of conservative donor money on a deliberately losing project.

He followed that up by saying: “Think of how much money they can get conservatives to throw at the Left’s winningest issue. If you think Commies wouldn’t identify and capitalize upon that full bore, I have a bridge to sell you.”

I have been called many things in my work as a pro-life activist, but a “communist front,” I must say, has never been one of them. It appears that activists of every stripe are permitted to forcefully advocate for their pet issue, but if pro-life activists object to abandoning innocent children in the womb by calling on politicians to reaffirm their previous commitments to the sanctity of life, we are a fifth column in the conservative movement.

With that in mind, I think it is important to remind people why pro-lifers cannot abandon their advocacy for the unborn. Let me share the testimony of Dr. Shelley Theobald, who attended medical school in Israel at the Medical School for International Health and then did her residency in Vancouver, Washington.

She now works at Clearwater Valley Hospital and Clinics in Orofino, Idaho. Two years ago, she shared her horrifying encounter with abortion when she was in her third year of medical school. One day, she wrote, she was told that she and other students would be rotating through several clinical exam rooms in order to experience different specializations in OB/GYN. She described what happened next:

I was switching with my classmates to enter a room where a “procedure” was taking place. There was a pregnant lady lying on a standard OB/GYN exam bed who was apparently consciously sedated. Next to her was an ultrasound machine and I smiled as I saw a baby about 17 weeks’ gestation floating peacefully in its amniotic sack, its tiny heartbeat flickering on the monitor screen.

I still had no idea what the “procedure” was until suddenly I saw a long, pointed object come into the triangular view of the ultrasound monitor and I watched in horror as the “tool” suddenly jabbed straight at the little baby. The baby immediately jolted violently as it reacted to the pain of the stab. I could not move: I felt paralyzed, dumbfounded. I remember thinking, “This mother needs to wake up and see what they are doing to her baby! She needs to know!”

The stabs kept coming and the baby continued to reel, its little arms and legs flailing and punching in the amniotic fluid as it fought to survive. It felt like an eternity but finally the movement stopped. The stabs kept coming, but the life was gone and the struggle was over. The little hands that only moments earlier seemed to wave at me from the ultrasound monitor were severed off!

Bit by bit, the baby was cut into indistinguishable pieces of tissue and the skull was crushed. Next came the vacuum, and as the doctor who performed the “procedure” pulled out the pieces of conception, I heard him chuckle. He turned to us, and with a grin I will never forget, he held up one of those tiny, perfect hands with forceps and reached it out to each of us saying, “high five, high five,” and laughed each time! I looked at him with disbelief!

After my shock wore off, I asked why the mother had chosen to have an abortion and he replied with a shrug that he was not sure, but said if he remembered right, she had possibly been exposed to a varicella zoster (the chicken pox), and therefore wanted an abortion. He shrugged again, then under his breath, he said, “you know, everyone needs their excuse,” and left the room.

That procedure – that barbarism – is what pro-lifers are fighting to stop, every single day. That horror is unfolding in clinics across the United States, and it was defended and celebrated for three long days at the Democratic National Convention.

To hear that a Trump-Vance administration would actively veto any legislation protecting babies even at that age – the federal abortion ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, would ban abortion at 15 weeks, three weeks after most European countries restrict abortion – is to ensure that the United States remains one of the most radical abortion regimes in the world.