The pro-life right's Trump problem building a 'culture of life'

The folks celebrating the Dobbs decision this week are, shall we say, an optimistic lot. Some of them genuinely believe that taking away the right to abortion is something that will someday be celebrated by the larger society -- that while it might be controversial now, it sets the stage for a broader societal reconsideration of what "life" means and who we protect.

"I believe we will defeat abortion in the long run, just as the abolitionists defeated slavery," Tim Carney writes for the Washington Examiner. "I believe that in our children's lifetimes, American society will agree that abortion is an intolerable evil and American society will welcome every child, expected or unexpected."

Maybe. I am pro-choice, but the possibility has occurred to me that sometime in the near future I'll be judged a monster for that position by, well, people like me who are just trying to do their moral best.

But Carney and his fellow travelers have a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goal: Donald Trump.

There can be no doubt about a couple of things:

* Donald Trump made the Dobbs decision possible -- inevitable -- by appointing the three conservative justices who gave conservatives their 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court.

* Whatever you think about that, Donald Trump is a villain.

Because he is a villain, and because he made the Dobbs decision possible, there is a large segment of the American public living right now who will never accept that decision because it's impossible to suss out whatever good that goes with it from all the bad things that Trump has done.

The lying. The sexual assault. The racism. The assault on democracy. The brazen griftery. The sheer narcissistic irresponsibility of his handling of the pandemic. Trump left the country in worse shape than he found it.

For many Americans, the abortion decision is inextricable from that legacy. Indeed, it's inextricable for Carney, too. 

"Former President Donald Trump has caused massive and lasting harm to the Republican Party and the conservative movement in ways not fully comprehended today," he wrote in a follow-up column. "It's hard to believe Trump was bad, on net for the country, when he delivered this great good. But it's also hard to embrace a man so foul as a force for good." 

Carney's conclusion is to give up figuring it out, saying we'll have a better perspective in a generation or so. 

Maybe that's the cost the pro-life movement had to pay to get the legal regime it wanted.

But that's roughly the same timeline he gives his movement for achieving this transformation of American attitudes. For that to happen, Americans will either have to A) untangle the abortion issue from Trump's legacy and consider it discreetly or B) silence their doubts about Trump.

Neither seems likely, at least to me.

Perhaps that will change if the right puts forth a kinder face, and prioritizes something other than "owning the libs" as the highest priority of online conservatives. They could start by actually doing things that make it easier to parent and raise kids in America (though as I've mentioned previously, that probably won't be entirely sufficient).

Even conservatives who want that to happen, though, recognize such a development is unlikely.

Throughout his career, David French writes today, he's been guided "by two burning convictions—that Roe represented a grave moral and constitutional wrong and that I belonged to a national Christian community that loved its fellow citizens, believed in a holistic ethic of life, and was ready, willing, and able to rise to the challenge of creating a truly pro-life culture." 

The problem? "I believe only one of those things today."

It's not the second part that he believes.

French doesn't explicitly mention Trump in his piece, but the former president's ghost clearly haunts his misgivings. "The Dobbs ruling has landed in the midst of a sick culture, and the pro-life right is helping make it sick," he writes.

I can't really argue the point.

The next few years are going to determine whether the pro-life right really can build a "culture of life," or whether the Dobbs ruling really will be as misery-making and awful for women as its critics suggest. The persistent popularity of Trump suggests the latter. The pro-life movement's Trump problem isn't just that his influence colors how people will remember the Dobb decision a generation or two hence -- it's also that his vice-signaling approach, so popular among Republican voters, stands in the way of engendering the "culture of life" that Carney, French and their allies want so desperately to build.