Published April 11, 2024
It has been a week of crushing setbacks for the pro-life movement.
On Monday, former President Donald Trump released a video in which he stated that abortion ought to be an issue worked out in the states, thus signaling that a second Trump administration would not pursue a gestational abortion ban at the federal level.
Then, on Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s abortion ban by appealing to an 1864 law still on the books. That’s technically a victory, but some leading Republicans in the state are criticizing the decision and running from it.
The irony is that while Dobbs allows states to set their own abortion policies, many Republicans in Arizona are apparently not even supportive of their own state laws restricting abortion. In other words, a lot of Republicans are racing to fall backwards into a functional pro-choice ethic because abortion is so politically flammable. This is, admittedly, morally depressing. Will this week’s events be the point in history that we will look back to and see the Republican Party coming out in defense of “safe, legal, and rare,” the moniker of Bill Clinton’s Democrat party in the 1990s?
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EPPC Fellow Andrew T. Walker, Ph.D., researches and writes about the intersection of Christian ethics, public theology, and the moral principles that support civil society and sound government. A sought-after speaker and cultural commentator, Dr. Walker’s academic research interests and areas of expertise include natural law, human dignity, family stability, social conservatism, and church-state studies. The author or editor of more than ten books, he is passionate about helping Christians understand the moral demands of the gospel and their contributions to human flourishing and the common good. His most recent book, out in May 2021 from Brazos Press, is titled Liberty for All: Defending Everyone’s Religious Freedom in a Secular Age.
