It’s doubtful that any contemporary political faction has been betrayed by its host party more often, or more publicly, than the anti-abortion movement.

The history of Republican presidents appointing Supreme Court justices — Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy — who uphold abortion rights is too uncanny to be accidental. (President George W. Bush even tried to put former White House counsel Harriet Miers on the court before anti-abortion activists rebelled.) There is simply nothing like it on the Democratic side.

So it’s been fascinating to watch activists grapple with the new abortion-rights candidacy of the anti-abortion president whose Supreme Court appointees scuttled Roe v. Wade, eliminating abortion rights for tens of millions of American women.

“My Administration,” candidate Donald Trump wrote on social media on Aug. 23, “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” The next day, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, told NBC News that Trump had said “explicitly” that as president he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one.

The abortion-rights barrage was only just beginning.

Trump followed up by declaring that as president he would make in-vitro fertilization treatments, which are opposed by many anti-abortion activists, free for all Americans. Since the average IVF cycle of treatment costs more than $14,000, and many patients require multiple cycles, it was an enormously generous gesture on behalf of American taxpayers. Earlier this year, Trump’s running mate, along with all but two other Republican senators, voted against legislation to protect mere access to IVF treatment. Trump’s promise represented a bold new step into the political bounce house where the former president performs stunts on matters he doesn’t care about or understand, and then watches to see how adults react.

Trump’s campaign, like his life, is a farrago of lies. But in the past few weeks, his mendacity has reached a comic crescendo on the issue of abortion, with Trump slurring nonsense out of multiple twists of his mouth. While promising IVF payments and “great” reproductive rights, Trump flip-flopped on an abortion amendment to Florida’s constitution, whipsawing between his abortion rights and anti-abortion rights poles in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Trump is still running around lying about the harrowing practice of “post-birth abortion,” which doesn’t exist and is simply known as felony murder in all 50 states.

The anti-abortion movement, which has long cast itself as a moral crusade in the likeness of slavery abolitionism, made its bed with an amoral demagogue and now must navigate his lies along with everyone else. For the Republican leaders of Texas and others who view punitive anti-abortion policy as a good way to keep the womenfolk down, Trump’s jabberwocky is surely no cause for consternation. They trust him to dissemble today, deliver tomorrow.

But for less corrupt actors, it can’t be easy to cast your lot with the nation’s greatest paragon of moral degeneracy and simply hope for the best. “I feel like Satan is running his campaign,” anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson told Notus.org.

“There is a crucial conversation happening right now about protecting children and political strategy,” Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote last week on X, where she has more than 360,000 followers. “We are pro-life activists. What should our response be when Trump repeatedly takes step after step back from what it means to protect innocent preborn lives, to the point of supporting abortion pills and vowing to veto abortion bans? It is wrong for Trump supporters to demand that pro-life activists be endlessly loyal to Trump in response to repeated betrayal.”

Rose soon found herself praising Trump for reversing himself on the Florida amendment, adopting the anti-abortion stance after she and others criticized him. But surely she knows that Trump’s words are meaningless, his moral authority nonexistent. The Trump-generated chaos only underscores how precarious the anti-abortion movement’s status is.

Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and the overturning of Roe v. Wade clarified the issue for millions of Americans and forced them to choose sides. The anti-abortion beliefs of Rose are opposed by a decisive majority of Americans, and with the cruel results of abortion bans endangering women’s lives across the country, Democrats are promising to codify Roe v. Wade if they win the House, Senate and White House in November.

Every powerful national social movement has included a few scoundrels in the ranks. But there is no corollary to the moral degradation that Trump supplies to every endeavor. Rose and others no doubt recognize the genuine risk that Trump’s amorality could taint what they insist is a moral movement, as it discolors everything it touches, for generations.

Political strategy of the moment suggests sticking with Trump and waiting for him, if victorious, to reward his base and betray anyone foolish enough to have believed his expedient support for abortion rights. But if the U.S. survives as a multi-racial democracy, it will do so by renouncing Trump and Trumpism. The backlash to Trump’s assaults on democracy and decency could be severe. In that event, association with Trump will be a stain that lingers, a spot that credible successors try desperately to expunge. A lot of Trump-adjacent causes may get washed out in the cleansing. Will the anti-abortion movement be one?

_____

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.