Trump Could Destroy the Anti-Abortion Movement
The former president’s flip-flops on the issue and the chaos they generate underscore the movement’s precarious status.
Which side is he on?
Photographer: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
It’s doubtful that any contemporary political faction has been betrayed by its host party more often, or more publicly, than the anti-abortion movement. The history of Republican presidents appointing Supreme Court justices — Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy — who uphold abortion rights is too uncanny to be accidental. (President George W. Bush even tried to put former White House counsel Harriet Miers on the court before anti-abortion activists rebelled.) There is simply nothing like it on the Democratic side.
So it’s been fascinating to watch activists grapple with the new abortion-rights candidacy of the anti-abortion president whose Supreme Court appointees scuttled Roe v. Wade, eliminating abortion rights for tens of millions of American women.