Speaking personally, I  judge that at times it may be necessary for me to vote for a better pro-choice candidate in order to avoid the election of a worse one and the dire consequences that would ensue. Pro-life stalwart Steven Mosher agrees, arguing that only a Trump victory—unlikely without the support of pro-lifers—gives hope of preserving pro-life gains at the federal level and influencing the President (see here). However, were I to cast such a vote, I would feel compelled to contact the candidate, explain that I am voting for him in spite of his position on life, and urge him to reconsider it, seeing that it is dangerously wrong, both for him and the nation.

Before I reply to the question above, a little history is in order.

In the mid-19^th century most American abolitionists had found a home in the Whig Party. But in 1852 the party leadership included a pro-slavery plank in its platform. The abolitionists bolted, and just four years later the Whig party exited American history, stage-left. It was replaced by a Republican Party dedicated to this fundamental principle: Self-evidently, it is wrong, at all times and in every place, for one person to kidnap, sell, buy, or enslave another.

It is just this stubborn adherence to principle that, for the last 50 years, has drawn millions of pro-life Americans into the GOP, which, until now, has held firmly to a similar principle: Self-evidently, it is wrong, at all times and in every place, for anyone to murder a pre-born human being by abortion.

Imagine, then, our shock and dismay, as we who are pro-life Americans watched President Trump and much of the GOP reject the historic GOP position on abortion and the sanctity of human life.

The litany of the President’s statements to this effect is depressingly familiar. He has told us that the SCOTUS got it right: abortion is a 10^th Amendment issue properly left to the states and the (diverse and ever-shifting) will of the voters.¹ Though he personally opposes late term abortions, he is fine with letting blue states permit them, even up to birth. He thinks current abortion law in Florida (and therefore some 15 other states) is too restrictive (i.e., illegal 6 weeks after conception, when the baby’s heart is now beting). He has pledged not to sign any federal law restricting abortion. He states that his administration will be “great for reproductive rights”. Professing love for wanted babies, he is keen on in-vitro fertilization, an enterprise fraught with moral hazard and inevitable manslaughter; as for unwanted babies, they are on their own. Perhaps most disturbingly, he and his surrogates surreptitiously marginalized pro-life members of the GOP Platform Committee in order to eviscerate the party’s deeply principled, highly detailed, and longstanding pro-life plank. Alas, all too many Republicans, fearing election loss, have fallen in line.

But might this much-lamented pivot to a pro-choice stance on abortion lead—Whig-like—to the death of the GOP? For the following four reasons, I would answer yes.

1. It forfeits the blessing of God and courts his judgment. Christians believe that righteousness exalts a nation, but that sin is a shame to any people (Proverbs 14:34). They believe that God will honor those who honor him, especially if they do so by defending the helpless victims of oppression and violence (1 Samuel 2:30; Proverbs 24:11-12). They believe that the primary purpose of government is to promulgate and administer God’s law (Romans 13), and that his law includes, as an especially high priority, solemn sanctions against murder (Genesis 9:5-7: Exodus 20:13). They also believe that abortion is a form of murder, that deep-down everyone knows it, and that when any citizen, candidate, judge, party, legislature, or nation suppresses such knowledge in unrighteousness and willfully murders the innocent, it is courting the judgment of God (Romans 1).

But one needn’t be a Christian to see all this. Thomas Jefferson, a deist who committed the new nation to the self-evident “laws of nature and nature’s God,” solemnly warned Americans that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever. Surely events have proven him right. Observe the (post-Roe) decay of our national character, culture, unity, institutions, public policy, economy, military readiness, and standing in the world. Is this not the hand of Almighty God, withdrawing his favor? But in view of 60 million deaths by abortion, one is compelled to ask: What has kept God’s hand from destroying us altogether? Could it be, in good part, a pro-life movement and a pro-life GOP that stood strong? If so, what might happen if they cave?

2. It betrays long-standing principles articulated in the Declaration, the Constitution, and the 2020 GOP platform: The latter stated:

The Constitution’s guarantee that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property” deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all” are “endowed by their Creator” with the inalienable right to life.  

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