Donald Trump poses as defender of anti-abortion activists

Donald Trump at the March for Life in Washington on January 24.
Donald Trump at the March for Life in Washington on January 24. NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP

If the voters of 2016 were not very sure of the changing convictions of Donald Trump concerning the right to abortion, those of 2020 no longer have any doubt: the American president is now without question the "champion" of activists anti-abortion.

His presence, Friday, January 24, at the March for Life, a demonstration organized each year in Washington since the recognition by the Supreme Court of the right to abortion (judgment "Roe v. Wade " from 1973), filled them. “He has matured on this question: now his speech comes from the heart. We feel strengthened ”, assures Dave Donofrio, a Catholic from Michigan, who came "Walk with Jesus" as his cap proclaims.

Unprecedented for a serving president, Mr. Trump spoke directly to the thousands of people massed in the National Mall in the federal capital. A crowd of all ages, mostly white, dominated by the banners of parishes and religious schools, from all over the country. "The unborn child has never had a greater defender in the White House", Trump said to the cheers.

Reassuring an electorate

Taking up a religious vocabulary, which he is hardly familiar with, and the recurring accusations of the anti-abortion movement, the president attacked the "Radicals" democrats who "Support abortion until birth and execute babies after birth. " Claims particularly unfounded in a country where 65% of abortions take place at eight weeks or less of gestation, almost all (91%) at less than thirteen weeks and where only 1.3% of abortions take place after twenty-one weeks , the law authorizes them up to twenty-two weeks.

Read also How the right to abortion is declining in Trump's America

These militant words support decisions and positions taken since his accession to the White House to reassure an electorate, predominantly religious, determined to limit, even prohibit access to abortion.

The appointment of two Conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who have made no secret of their convictions on the subject, and the massive renewal of judges in courts across the country – one in four has now been appointed by Trump , as the President recalled on Friday, are the most visible and enduring victories for anti-abortion activists for the time being.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here