I'm not a knee-jerk David French hater but once in a while I think he does live up to his reputation for bending over backwards to justify his shift to the Democratic Party. Case in point, the NY Times has an opinion piece/podcast up today titled "David French on the Pro-Life Case for Kamala Harris." I saw this headline today and thought, okay, you got me. I'm going to click on this article just to see a human spine snapping in half.

I’m often asked if I’m still conservative. The answer is I’m voting against Trump precisely because I’m conservative.

Okay, but let's skip the preliminaries about the Reagan era. I'm here for the pro-life case for Kamala Harris.

I’m an evangelical Christian, and I’ve been pro-life for reasons related both to my faith and to my understanding of science and justice. And it was one of the primary reasons why I continued my affiliation with the Republican Party, because of the Republican Party’s consistent commitment to a pro-life position.

Here we go. Are you ready?

But with the rise of Donald Trump, I was very, very concerned about his effect. Abortions went up under his presidency, and since the Dobbs decision, the pro-life movement has been in a state of political collapse. It’s not even been able to win a referendum in a red state. Trump was the very first president since Carter to end his presidency with a higher abortion rate and ratio and tens of thousands of more abortions.

Sigh. Okay, it's absolutely true that the number of abortions' went up under Trump. After hitting a low in 2017, they started climbing and were up around 8% by the time he left office. Not a huge jump but it did reverse the downward trend that had been happening for the previous decade. What French doesn't tell you is that things are just as bad under President Biden:

More than a million abortions were provided in the U.S. in 2023. That's a major finding from a report published Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports access to abortion.

To be precise, researchers estimate there were 1,026,700 abortions in 2023. "That's the highest number in over a decade, [and] the first time there have been over a million abortions provided in the U.S. formal health care system since 2012," explains Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist with Guttmacher.

So as of last year, the number of abortion was up about 10% from the end of 2020. Trump may be the first president since Carter to see more abortions at the end of his term but unless something really unusual happens Biden will have a similar, and perhaps slightly worse, record. Is there a reason to leave that out of your argument? I mean, if this metric is a reason not to vote for Trump shouldn't it also be a reason not to vote for Biden (and now Harris)?

Also, the way he frames the Dobbs decision, as the worst thing to happen to the pro-life movement in years is a very weird thing for a pro-life person to say. Dobbs is the biggest win in the history of the pro-life movement. To the degree that Trump deserves some credit for that (and he does) that deserves more than a passing mention. 

Anyone can see that Dobbs, while a clear win, has also galvanized pro-abortion Democrats. They have been running on this issue and setting up ballot initiatives in a number of states. But the point is, there is no world in which overturning Roe would not result in massive pushback from the left. Knowing that's the case, you have a choice between taking the win and the backlash or taking neither. Those are the only options. French gives Trump no credit for the big win and yet wants to blame him for the backlash spawned by the win which has (temporarily) stalled further pro-life progress. This doesn't strike me as a fair accounting. In fact, VP Harris herself gives Trump much more credit than French does.

So you’re beginning to have a world with more abortions, decreased support for the pro-life movement, and then Donald Trump himself and the MAGA movement fundamentally changes the Republican Party platform to the point where it was no longer recognizably pro-life. And it was the most watered down platform on abortion in 40 years.

Again, abortions have continued to rise under Biden. Decreased support is part of the inevitable Dobbs backlash. As for the platform change, I think Trump is trying to avoid handing Democrats a winning issue, one which they are eager to campaign on. In other words, I think it's a strategic move. But whatever the case, the platform is still clearly pro-life.

The policy document sticks to the party’s longstanding principle that the Constitution extends rights to fetuses, but removes language maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” a passage in the party platform first included in 1984.

Now compare that the the Democrats' platform:

We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. We will repeal the Title X domestic gag rule and restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides vital preventive and reproductive health care for millions of people, especially low-income people, and people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, including in underserved areas.

Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and protect and codify the right to reproductive freedom.

One of these things is not like the other. Bottom line, there is no pro-life case for supporting a party and a candidate who are decidedly and vocally pro-abortion.