With nearly two months remaining before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, stories about the president-elect’s slate of selections for high federal office dominate the headlines. Stories are beginning to accumulate as well about details of the president’s legislative agenda.
The Trump campaign rejected any suggestion it would follow outside groups’ agendas and generally allowed prominent allies like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to speak to the president’s priorities. The 2024 GOP platform was more abbreviated than its predecessors in terms of policy clues. So, what do we think the new Congress, the 119th in our history, will do regarding abortion and related issues?
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There is a long list of policies from the first Trump term that could be reinstated. In addition, as veteran commentators have pointed out, there is an abundance of new ideas that may be advanced that could command majority support. What does history teach us about the direction pro-life forces should take, particularly around the priority known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act? This long-term goal of the pro-life movement has the unique status of being an idea Trump endorsed in writing when he ran for office in 2016. In a letter to a coalition led by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, then-candidate Trump wrote:
“I am committed to:
- Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.
- Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.
- Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.”
Now, eight years later, three of these four commitments remain unfulfilled. While the nomination and confirmation of pro-life justices remain critical and there is little reason to think President Trump will not maintain the pattern of judicial appointments that characterized his first term, his actions on that front remain to be seen. The key questions surround how GOP majorities in Congress can deliver on the other three promises, particularly the Pain-Capable legislation. A key hurdle is whether an abortion limit of this nature constitutes a national abortion ban, which Trump and his Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, have said he will veto.
Apart from the prospect of this new pledge directly contradicting the 2016 commitment, there is evidence, from both an intellectual and historical standpoint, that the pain limit by no means constitutes a national ban on the procedure. Recent evidence published in the United Kingdom and circulated in the United States has shifted the debate earlier in pregnancy via the finding that an experience of pain by the unborn may occur by 15 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. Even so, an estimated 96% of U.S. abortions occur at or before 15 weeks gestation. Vance, in particular, has suggested that the Trump-Vance opposition to a “national ban” does not imply opposition to a 15-week limit.
Polling on abortion limits later in pregnancy is generally favorable to the pro-life cause. That said, how to proceed in Congress where the Democrats hold 47 Senate seats and somewhere in the vicinity of 215 House seats? One answer can be supplied by reviewing how Democratic opposition to a previous popular measure, the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, was worn down and ultimately overcome. The root of the proposition is that the PBA Ban was adopted because Republicans were relentless on its behalf and the American people agreed with them. From its origin in the research of National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) Legislative Director Douglas Johnson to its final adoption in Congress and approval by a 5-4 Supreme Court, the PBA Ban took 16 years to become established law.
The final congressional votes on the measure were bipartisan to a degree not seen since. In the House, 63 Democrats voted for the bill; in the Senate meanwhile, 17 Democrats voted to pass the ban, including current and future leaders like Tom Daschle (S.D.), Joe Biden (Del.), and Robert Byrd (W.Va.). Overall, the margin of support in both chambers was roughly two-to-one.
Can this kind of consensus be achieved in 2025 on pain legislation, two decades after the PBA Ban was enacted? There is reason to think so, and even more reason to find out. Obscured in the general Republican euphoria of Election Day was the fact that the rearguard organization Democrats for Life described November 5 as a day of victories for their movement. The group reported a success rate of 97% percent — 37 out of the 39 races endorsed — as they strive to rebuild their network from what they term a “whole life” perspective.
To reverse the decline in the GOP and to maintain progress in the Democratic Party, regular votes on matters of substance are critical. As every issue advocate who has ever worked in Washington, D.C. knows, the number of members of Congress who claim to hold a steadfast view dwarfs the number who will pass a substantive bill when the “other side” is paying attention and investing in resistance. On abortion, of course, the other side is always paying attention. If that view seems too cynical, it’s with good reason — the number of members of Congress, like members of the public, who are torn about the brutality of abortion is actually high. For the GOP, it’s a matter of basic morality around questions of community and family; for Democrats, the arguments that have carried the most weight surround protecting the “little guy” and eschewing violence.
In the early days of the PBA fight, I got to see this firsthand. Every year during the March for Life, I would attend events, including luncheons of state delegations. In some cases, I would accompany those delegations as they visited Capitol Hill, where I had spent years as a legislative liaison for NRLC or Family Research Council. On this occasion, I joined a group from New York State on their annual appointment to meet with Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan was respected as a scholar, a student of the family who had made trenchant observations, for example, about the decline of the two-parent family, particularly among black Americans. His phrase regarding how norms deteriorate and anti-social behavior becomes acceptable — “defining deviancy down” — still resonates.
During our meeting with him, which was cordial (as all these visits tended to be, despite deeply held differences), Moynihan observed that it was refreshing to meet with constituents who were not coming to see him with requests for public money or some other form of self-interest. He said something to the effect that the New York delegation was there for others, and that made them rare in his time in office. I recalled that moment when, in 2003, President Bush signed into law the PBA Ban, and cited Moynihan who, despite his pro-choice views, had said the brutal practice was “as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon.”
Can something like this happen in the 119th Congress? The Democratic leadership misled their candidates in 2024 by investing hundreds of millions in abortion ads and ignored the pleas from their former working-class base to focus on the economy and lawlessness in the streets. If the party sincerely wants to get away from — or at least dilute its social radicalism — it (or some members) might conclude that turning a blind eye toward the pain of children being poisoned or torn apart in the womb would be a good place to start.
No matter what, the incoming Republican majorities should promptly test this proposition in the new Congress. The American people have a right to know if there is a limit — any limit — to what is indeed a close cousin of infanticide.
LifeNews Note: Chuck Donovan is a 50-year veteran of the national debate over the right to life and served from 1981-89 as a writer in the Reagan White House.He is the former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council.
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