There are two uncompromising sides in the abortion debate — and then there’s the middle, which is where most Americans are.
It’s also where Donald Trump is: He’s best described as a pro-life moderate.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, on the other hand, are neither pro-life nor moderate.
The Democratic ticket wants to impose one policy on the whole country, a policy to allow abortion up to the point of birth.
Common sense tells ordinary Americans that when they see a pregnant woman, there’s a baby inside her.
Ultrasound imaging makes clear just what the baby inside looks like, including in early months when it’s not outwardly obvious a woman’s pregnant.
Late-term abortions, when it’s easy to understand a baby’s life is being taken, deeply trouble voters.
They’re willing to make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the baby’s unable to live outside the womb, but otherwise they believe these procedures should be restricted.
For lawmakers and the public, the hard question is just how late is “late-term.”
How far along does a pregnancy have to be before the law recognizes and protects a child?
For Kamala Harris, that’s an easy question because she doesn’t think there should be limits on abortion, no matter how late.
Pro-life activists upset at Trump because he says a ban on abortion after six weeks, as in Florida, is too early — though he also opposes a Florida constitutional amendment aimed at loosening the law — should worry more about where Harris stands on abortion after six months.
Democrats like Harris often say they want to go back to the way things were under Roe v. Wade, which, along with subsequent Supreme Court decisions, theoretically permitted different restrictions on abortion during different trimesters.
In practice, the Roe regime interpreted “health” of the mother so broadly that it didn’t just allow late-term abortions to save her life but for any number of reasons — or none at all.
Under Roe, some Democrats even defended what opponents labeled “partial-birth abortion,” where the abortion’s performed as the baby’s being delivered.
Harris wants abortion to be available at any time, anywhere from coast to coast, without regard for the distinctions voters try to make from state to state as they ask when a baby becomes a baby.
Roe never solved America’s abortion dilemma, but only intensified it, taking the last word on the issue out of state politics and making it a source of national division.
The federalist approach Trump favors brings decision-making back to voters’ own communities, where they can reason through their differences as neighbors, building whatever agreement is possible on the small scale.
But that middle way is as unsatisfactory to the firmest pro-lifers as it is to abortion-everywhere extremists like Harris.
The most consistent abortion opponents believe personhood begins at conception — yet they have a hard time convincing other Americans of this.
Their own slogans sometimes undercut the argument.
“It’s a baby, not a clump of cells,” goes one saying — but when most voters think about a fertilized egg cell or embryo in earliest development, they don’t see a baby.
Adding to the difficulty is that the unstinting position rules out in-vitro fertilization, since that reproductive assistance creates more embryos than can be implanted and born.
Democrats delight in turning the pro-life argument inside out: Can it really be pro-family to prevent children from being conceived and born?
No IVF means fewer babies — most Americans don’t think that’s a good thing.
Neither does Trump, which is why he risked the wrath of abortion opponents by telling NBC News, “Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” elaborating, “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
He risks provoking small-government and localist conservatives, too, but that’s a risk he takes knowing IVF enjoys overwhelming support, including among Republicans.
Democrats know this too, which is why they lie about what Trump and his party believe.
Tim Walz went as far as to lie about his own wife’s fertility treatments, pretending she received IVF so he could falsely claim about Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, that “If it was up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF.”
The truth is Vance supports IVF — and Walz’s wife never had it.
A sure sign Trump and Vance occupy the middle ground is that they’re being criticized by the right as well as the left, while no abortion supporter, however radical, feels a need to criticize Harris and Walz.
The staunchest pro-lifers don’t want to settle for Trump’s compromise, but the alternative on the ballot in November isn’t an absolute anti-abortion position — it’s the absolute abortion-supporting position of Harris and Walz.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.
