This year’s RNC featured some of the strongest and most powerful pro-life voices in American politics. From Abby Johnson’s moving testimony, to Nicholas Sandmann’s pro-life speech and Sister Deirdre Byrne’s religious witness, the Republican Party in 2020 exhibits the courage to unabashedly defend the rights and the dignity of the unborn. Pro-life Americans need to pay attention. In this November’s election, the right to life is very much at stake. Our votes will determine whether more preborn lives are lost or saved.
This position may be unpopular with many of America’s professional pundits who muddy the waters. But electoral politics have always played a significant role in deciding the future of preborn lives, and never have politics mattered as much as they do in 2020. For pro-life voters, whether they’re Muslim or Christian or agnostic, the choice in November is clear. But don’t just take my word for it. Let the facts speak for themselves.
Let’s start with the obvious. The 2020 presidential election will pit one of America’s most successful pro-life incumbents against what is quite possibly the most pro-abortion Democratic candidacy America has ever seen. Whatever their positions on other issues, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris fully support the radical abortion industry agenda.
As a senator, Harris cosponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would prohibit sovereign states from passing and enforcing any legal restrictions on abortion, even past the point of viability. Everything from informed consent laws to mandatory waiting periods and anything in between is on the line with Harris in the White House. And Harris used false pretenses about women’s rights to vote against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act, which would ensure that doctors provide life-saving medical care to any living, breathing infant who survives a failed abortion.
For voters hoping that Biden would be a voice of moderation against Harris’ radical abortion track record, think again. Biden shifts like the desert sands on issues of life. Throughout his career in the Senate, Biden has supported the Hyde Amendment, a vital piece of legislation that ensures federal taxpayer dollars can’t subsidize abortion. But in 2020, Biden immediately caved on this issue as soon as the left mounted a modicum of political pressure against his historical views. Why should we expect Joe Biden to develop moral courage after he’s elected to office?
Biden is unreliable, and his party’s platforms will carry his potential presidency to the most pro-abortion administration in history. While 75% of Americans support a view on abortion that places restrictions on abortion access, the Democratic Party has taken abortion rights to more extremes than ever. Even thousands of Democrats aren’t on board with the Biden-Harris abortion radical positions. According to a January Marist Poll, nearly 65% of all Americans and 44% of Democrats say they “are likely to vote for” candidates who want significant restrictions on abortion.
But the fight for life isn’t just about what presidents will do with their executive power. It’s also about the courts. And no, I’m not talking about the Supreme Court, which only grants certiorari in one abortion case few years and consistently upholds Roe v. Wade. The judicial battle for the right to life is fought in the lower courts. And it’s here that President Trump insulated our pro-life cause for decades to come. President Trump placed 197 originalist judicial nominees into America’s court system. Pro-choice activists challenge constitutional regulations that protect pregnant women and their preborn children as quickly as sovereign state legislatures pass them. Judges in the lower courts will provide a bulwark against aggressive pro-choice activism for years to come. With Biden and Harris in office, could we reasonably expect the same? Of course not.
This brings me to perhaps the most important point of all. The fight for life is obviously a cultural battle. To protect preborn lives, we need more than pro-life executive action and courageous court nominations. We need a political culture that supports the right to life and refuses to encourage pro-abortion activism. Pro-abortion activists are not sitting idly by, content with current abortion access. Planned Parenthood Action, for example, fights passionately to expand abortion funding, access, and cultural acceptance. That’s because abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are committed to profiting off an underserved and vulnerable pregnant population. They are well funded and utilize everything from the media to education to advance their cause.
With Biden and Harris in office, pro-abortion groups will access the full powers of the administrative state to enforce their agenda—including legislating by memorandum and executive orders. We’ve seen it before with the legal battles over Obamacare’s contraceptive and abortion pill mandate. And with the possibility of a Democrat majority in the House and Senate in 2020, a potential Biden/Harris presidency would give Democrats an unobstructed path forward to enact their barbaric abortion measures. We have a moral obligation to stand in the gap and not allow them to push forward.
Allow me to make one final point about statistics. All too often, people discuss abortion rates as a simple statistical number. But we can never forget that every percentage point represents tens of thousands of lives either lost or saved. Any reduction in the rate at which preborn children are killed translates directly into a human person saved and allowed to live. When we think about the effect of our votes, we absolutely must think in terms of lives, and not in terms of statistics. We must also remember it may take years to see the fruit of policies that promote women and life. While there may not be a quick fix to saving the preborn in our political climate, we are duty-bound to do our part to protect the vulnerable among us in any way we can.
In every realm, from policy and the courts to culture, the Biden/Harris ticket is a disaster for the pro-life cause. Republicans are right to call this out explicitly. And in 2020, pro-life voters face the simplest choice of all: either a vote cast for lives lost or a vote cast for lives well-lived.
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Chelsey Youman is National Legislative Adviser and Texas State Director for Human Coalition Action, the public policy advocacy 501(c)4 arm of Human Coalition, which is one of the largest pro-life organizations in the nation, operating a growing network of telehealth and brick-and-mortar women’s healthcare centers across the nation.