WASHINGTON (BP) — Donald Trump’s pledge to ensure medication abortion access has not quelled optimism among some pro-lifers about prospects for his second term as president. Others aren’t so sure.
“For his second term, he is trying to take a more neutral stance on the abortion issue,” said Carolyn McDonnell, litigation counsel with the pro-life organization Americans United for Life (AUL). But “we can be optimistic about his upcoming term. I think we are going to see a lot of pro-family policy that indirectly impacts the abortion issue.”
That could include initiatives to reduce the cost of giving birth, adoption and foster care tax credits and extended postpartum insurance coverage, McDonnell said. Trump’s fiscal conservatism could lead to “a little bit of a crackdown” against funding abortion with federal money, and he is likely to continue supporting “conscience protections” for recipients of federal funds who refuse to perform abortions.
Still, recent comments by Trump unsettled other pro-lifers.
During an interview with Time magazine to accompany his Person of the Year designation, the president-elect initially said he would “take a look at” whether to limit access to medication abortion. But when pressed, he said he was “strongly against” limiting access. Then when asked, “Are you committed to making sure that the FDA does not strip [women’s] ability to access abortion pills?” Trump replied, “That would be my commitment.”
Earlier this year, Trump also dropped the idea of a national 16-week abortion ban, according to Time’s reporting. His campaign aides allegedly presented him a slide deck titled “How a national abortion ban will cost Trump the election.”
The moderated stances on abortion seemed to be an about-face for the man who suggested in the 2016 presidential campaign that women who have abortions should be punished, and whose Supreme Court appointments helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“Obviously, these comments show we have work to do,” said Brent Leatherwood, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). “Creating a culture of life was always going to be a challenge but, before we can even get to that point, we clearly have to help people understand the inherent value of every life, and that there is no difference whether a child’s life is taken by an abortionist or an abortion chemical. Both are equally wrong and both need to be stopped.”
Medication abortion accounted for 63% of abortions nationwide last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, up from 53% in 2020. Overall, the number of abortions in America increased more than 10% from 2020 to 2024 despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Rising abortion numbers seem to reflect public sentiment. Sixty-three% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center. But those numbers don’t quash hope for protecting unborn life, said Shannon Royce, a former ERLC legislative counsel who served in the Department of Health and Human Services during Trump’s first administration. They just reflect the need for more work.
“President Trump is recognizing where the American people are,” said Royce, former director of HHS’s Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives. “Pro-life Americans are going to remember President Trump as the beginning of the end of abortion in America.” However, “this was only the beginning of the new battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. Many did not realize how much ground we lost in almost 50 years of Roe.”
State ballot initiatives since 2022 have been “painful revelations” of how much work remains to be done in winning hearts and minds, Royce said. This year 10 states voted on ballot measures supporting abortion rights, and seven passed. The only states where pro-abortion measures failed were Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Between June 2022 and November 2023, seven additional states voted on abortion-related ballot measures, and all seven retained or expanded abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Five of those seven states voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Discipleship is the answer to failures to protect life, Royce said.
“We need to understand there is much more to a pro-life ethic than simply saving the unborn and their mothers. Certainly, it begins there. But it cannot end there,” she said.
“It means donating to and volunteering with the pregnancy care center in your area, supporting women in an unexpected pregnancy and after they deliver their children. It means caring for children in foster care whose families are unable to support them. It means protecting those with disabilities from mis- or ill-treatment and those at the end of life from calls for a premature death.”
Pastors should not feel overwhelmed or like they must start numerous pro-life ministries, Royce said. “In teaching about a pro-life ethic and praying with his people about that, the hope would be that the people in his congregation would be burdened by those various areas. We have seen that across the country in different churches.”
The ERLC hopes to catalyze local church discipleship as the battle for life continues.
“An estimated 1 in 5 women experience medical complications after taking [the abortion drug] mifepristone, in addition to the precious innocent lives ended,” Leatherwood said. “These destructive effects should not be allowed to continue in President Trump’s second term.
“We’ll continue pointing this out to the new administration and working toward the day when the abortion pill is recognized for the evil it is and banned,” he said. “I’ve pointed out in the past that it took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. Comments like [Trump’s] show it may take another 50 years to establish a true culture of life where every life is protected, valued and supported.”
Sanctity of Life Sunday is Jan. 19 on the SBC Calendar.
(EDITOR’S NOTE — David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.)
