After a string of disappointing announcements, Evangelicals are cautioning the Trump campaign and Republicans not to run away from their “historic position of protecting unborn children.”
Trump posted on Truth Social late last week that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” a comment in no uncertain terms referring to abortion. On Thursday, he further told NBC that upon taking office, he would mandate in vitro fertilization (IVF) to be paid for by the government or imposed upon insurance companies to fund.
Many Christians, including Answers In Genesis Founder and CEO Ken Ham, have warned that IVF aborts en masse unused embryos that are conceived in the processโmaking it just as egregious and life-destroying as what would conventionally be considered an abortion.
Additionally, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, stated on Sunday that their administration would commit to blocking any federal abortion bans.
No doubt, the Trump-Vance campaign believes that meeting in the middle on abortion will help secure more votes from individuals who would otherwise have been voting for the Democrat Party. They also know that due to Kamala Harris’s extreme position of advocating for abortion up until birth (and beyond), even if the Trump campaign shifts positions, conservative voters will be unlikely to change their votes in the Democrats’ direction.
From a strategy perspective, it’s a win-win for Trump’s campaign: prevail in gaining more votes from the left with little fear of risking votes from the right. But from a moral and Biblical position, it’s a dangerous game.
While clarifying that he is in no way advising people not to vote for Trump in the upcoming election, Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, emphasized on Washington Watch that it is a grave mistake not to hold the republican party accountable when it errs.
“I’ve taken a little bit of grief from people who have said, ‘You shouldn’t say anything,'” he explained. “Well, I’m sorry, as Christians, as evangelicals in this country… we are to be a prophetic voice to the political leaders. We are not to fall in line when their positions are not in accord with biblical truth.”
“I’m not saying that we would ever vote for a party who advocates abortion until birth, but what I am saying is we have to hold both parties to the same standard,” Perkins urged. “And when one party gets it wrong, and the other party gets it wrong, we should be just as quick to call them out. And this is wrong. What we’re seeing is a fundamental change in the Republican Party’s decades-long position on protecting unborn children. And we cannot be silent about this issue.”
“God have mercy on us as a nation if the one party that has been advocating for the unborn child and for their mothers abandons its position on life,” he said, adding that conservatives are “the only thing standing between abortions until birth with taxpayer funds. That’s what the Democratic Party is pushing for. And it looks like the Republicans are running away from their historic position of protecting unborn children.”
“What does this mean for voters? We still have to speak the truth. We have to vote, but we vote for the candidate most clearly aligns with Biblical truth,” he implored, pointing to the republican party. “I would just like the contrast to be starker.”
“I want to encourage Donald Trump to take a stronger position on life,” Perkins stated. “But if we’re silent, nobody’s going to change. We have to pray. We have to vote. We have to stand. Standing means we have to speak the truth whether or not people receive it or agree with it.”
“We are not an appendage of any political party,” he asserted. “The church is a prophetic voice to this country, and we have to use the voice, speaking the truth that God has entrusted to us.”
