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There seems to be a question this week about Donald Trump’s relationship with antiabortion groups. It’s the same question we’ve been hearing for a while, but it’s taken on new urgency with his appearance on NBC News. Afterward, the Post’s Aaron Blake asked what antiabortion groups are going to do now. Nothing is the answer, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

During an interview Sunday with “Meet the Press,” Trump dodged commitments to a federal 15-week ban. He also said that six-week bans that have been enacted in four states, including Florida and Iowa, were “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” The implication is that things are much worse in states that have outright banned abortion. 

These comments follow similar ones that Trump has made since the 2022 midterms, after which it was clear that antiabortion politics is not the winner that Republicans had thought it would be. They expected to sweep the House, as they did in 2010. Instead, they eked a nine-seat majority. Antiabortion politics is very unpopular. Trump knows it. 

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Anyway, abortion isn’t about abortion. It’s about women’s place in society relative to men’s. This is a shared focus, whether from the antiabortionist or white evangelical Protestant view. It doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t religious. It doesn’t matter that he’s squishy on abortion bans. What matters is that his enemies are theirs.  

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And antiabortion groups know that Trump knows it. They’ve been keeping an eye on him. In the spring, when Trump first refused to commit to a 15-week federal ban, a major antiabortion group said that that was “morally indefensible.” Now comes restrictions and bans that are “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” But instead of being “morally indefensible,” the same group now says that “makes no sense.”

So the question, according to Blake, is whether “such groups grin and bear it, with Trump serving as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee? Or will they fight back? The former presents the possibility that they could be left out in the cold; the latter presents the possibility of a major and lasting setback in the battle over abortion restrictions.”

The answer is important, because abortion is perhaps the most important issue to Republicans. Sixty percent of GOP voters favor complete abortion bans or six-week bans. On abortion, Blake wrote, “the most passionate segment of the base is often inflexible and adamant. [Trump’s] comments serve to test just how firm antiabortion Republicans are and how willing they are to police their own.”

If we look at the question in a different context, we know the answer.

They will do nothing.

Antiabortionists will do no more to police their party’s most likely nominee than white evangelical Protestant groups have done. 

You may recall, not long ago, that white evangelical Protestant groups were reported to have been outraged by Donald Trump’s conclusion that extreme abortion restrictions had cost the Republicans their anticipated majority in the House. Back in March, the Times reported, amid what had appeared to be a competitive Republican primary, that white evangelical Protestants, who had been Trump’s strongest backers during his White House tenure, had returned to “playing the field.”

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It has since become clear that the Republican primary is not competitive. Trump is ahead by a mile, according to polling. White evangelical Protestants have therefore walked off “the playing field” in order to accommodate him on abortion the way they accommodated him on religion. He doesn’t have to live the faith, according to Franklin Graham, just defend it. The same goes for “the sanctity of life.” 

Antiabortion groups will almost certainly do the same thing.

They will figure out a way of rationalizing their support for a presidential candidate who does not embrace their extremely unpopular position on abortion, just as white evangelical Protestants figured out a way of rationalizing their support for a presidential candidate who does not embrace their faith in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, abortion isn’t about abortion. It’s about women’s place in society relative to men’s. This is a shared focus, whether from the antiabortionist or white evangelical Protestant view. It doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t religious. It doesn’t matter that he’s squishy on abortion bans. What matters is that his enemies are theirs.

And now that the abortion rights movement has been mobilized by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe, their enemies are everywhere. As megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffries put it: “Christians feel like they are in an existential cultural war between good and evil, and they want a warrior like Donald Trump who can win.” 

In the process, they will reveal, if we’re willing to see it, that they don’t mean what they say about abortion or “life” – or any of that. They will have revealed, as Jacques Berlinerblau speculated recently about “modern evangelicalism,” that their movement has capsized. “The faithful may be taking their cues not from Scripture,” he wrote, “but from whatever it is Trump is saying or posting on any given day.”

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