Pro-life Americans, engaged in the great civil rights battle of our time, often remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s insistence that “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” But as King himself knew, that bend doesn’t get there by itself. History is bent by people with the power to do the bending. In the United States, that power lies in the sovereign people, and the pro-life movement has been tremendously successful in changing hearts and minds in the 46 years since Roe v. Wade.
Most Americans, including women, oppose Roe’s extremism. Majorities oppose sex-selection abortion, taxpayer funding of abortion, and abortions after the point at which unborn children can feel pain.
Candidate Donald Trump’s promise to be a pro-life president was a decisive reason he won the presidency in 2016. He has kept his promise to nominate originalist-minded judges who decide cases based on what the Constitution says and not on what they wish it said. He also took decisive action to divert taxpayer dollars away from the abortion industry and to community and rural health centers that do not perform abortions.
Congressional Republicans, as usual, have failed to hold up their end of the bargain. While Republicans held both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2017-18, they failed to advance any serious protections for the unborn.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of fetal development, remains a bill and not a law. Taxpayer funds still flow to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, despite the shocking evidence that they are illegally harvesting and selling fetal body parts.
This is an inexcusable failure.
Now that Democrats have taken control of the House, many Republicans would have pro-lifers believe that nothing more can be done to help unborn children and mothers in crisis pregnancies. But this is false.
Obviously, the Republican Senate can and will continue to confirm President Trump’s judicial nominees.
But there is more, much more, the Trump administration can do unilaterally to keep the president’s promises and advance his policy goal to protect the most vulnerable Americans.
Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services can use its wide discretion to prioritize the cause of life in its programs and projects around the country.
One example is the $25 million Pregnancy Assistance Fund. The program could be re-purposed to specifically help girls and women facing crisis pregnancies and empower them to overcome the abortion industry targeting them.
Second, HHS Secretary Alex Azar could impose a new level of rigor in his contracting authority. Except where specified in statute, the federal government need not be in business either with Planned Parenthood, nor with businesses and nonprofit organizations affiliated with it, nor anyone else in the multibillion-dollar Big Abortion industry. Health service providers should be given a clear choice: You can do business with Planned Parenthood, or with the federal government, but not both.
We all know the federal bureaucracy sees Big Abortion as an ally. Therefore it is up to Azar to make this cause his own. He alone has the authority within HHS, and therefore the responsibility, to make abortion profiteers like Planned Parenthood the pariahs they should be.
Finally, as all pro-lifers know, our greatest ally in the fight to protect the unborn is not any politician or judge — our greatest ally is the truth. Through the vast budget and discretion Azar has over public health initiatives, the Trump administration can educate the public about the facts of pregnancy and human development and the grisly truth about abortion. Abortion is the number one cause of death in the United States every year — if you didn’t know that already, that’s a sure sign HHS can do more on this front.
President Trump has already done more for the pro-life cause in two years than his predecessors did in four. But with Congress now closed as an avenue of progress, this “president for life” should order his administration to keep up the fight for human dignity.
Jim DeMint (@JimDeMint) is chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute. A Republican, DeMint was a senator from South Carolina from 2005 to 2013.
