Gauging the pro-life vote

As the race to the White House enters its final months, former President Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, continue to distance themselves from pro-life positions. In the last few weeks, they have claimed to be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” critiqued Florida’s law protecting babies after six weeks, vowed to veto a national abortion ban, and promised to mandate health coverage for in vitro fertilization.

The series of statements sparked strong reactions from pro-life leaders. Live Action president Lila Rose called the Republican presidential ticket “increasingly pro-abortion,” saying that “they are making it impossible for pro-life voters to support them.” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, admitted Trump was “wrong on abortion” but said she will be “voting for him in November” as a more hopeful alternative to Vice President Kamala Harris. She argued in an op-ed that “writing in a nonsense name or sitting out this election would be a moral wrong.”

With less than two months until Election Day, the Trump-Vance campaign’s wavering statements and the diverging responses of pro-life leaders leave everyday pro-life voters with an unclear path forward. WORLD interviewed 10 pro-life voters about how they’re navigating the presidential election. Prior to Trump and Harris’ highly anticipated televised debate scheduled for Tuesday, five of the 10 still planned to vote for Trump—for a variety of reasons. Four were still undecided, and one planned to vote third party. Here’s a closer look at where five of those voters stand.

The undecided single-issue voter

Cassidy Shooltz is a 25-year-old nursing assistant in Michigan. She’s worked for state and national pro-life organizations in the past—both as a staff member and as a volunteer—and calls herself a single-issue voter on the abortion. She was too young to vote in the 2016 election but voted for Trump in his 2020 race against President Joe Biden. “I wasn’t 100 percent confident in [Trump]. But of the two, he seemed less pro-abortion,” Shooltz said, pointing out that Trump openly took a pro-abortion stance before running for president. She trusted his pro-life advisers: “I felt that maybe he’d received education from the pro-life movement.”

But Shooltz isn’t confident Trump will earn her vote again this year. She said that ever since he blamed Republican losses in the 2022 midterms on pro-life positions, she’s known that Trump would not be strong on the life issue this time around. Shooltz said she feels like she’s “choosing between two candidates who have an evil position on life.”

For now, the biggest factor deterring Shooltz from voting for Trump is his recent promise to fund in vitro fertilization. “Some people even argue that IVF, in some cases, may be killing more children than abortion itself,” Shooltz said, adding that Trump’s support for IVF makes her doubt the moral rightness of voting for him. “But then that creates the ethical complexity of, if I’m not voting for Trump, am I … just kind of giving a vote—by passing—for Kamala?” Shooltz asked. As of now, she’s leaning toward voting third party but still sees the argument behind voting for the lesser of two evils.

The reluctant Trump supporter

Pastor’s wife Kassie Andridge, 58, works in marketing for a pro-life pregnancy center in Wisconsin and used to attend births as a doula. She said a big part of her pro-life position is her love for pregnant moms and her desire to see them “strengthened in their pregnancies” and “equipped to be parents.” Accusations that Trump has mistreated women, in part, drove her to vote independent in the last two presidential elections.

But this year, she plans to vote for Trump. While she finds his recent pro-abortion comments disheartening, she’s throwing her support behind him because she wants “no part in supporting” the radical pro-abortion position of the Harris campaign. She said the presence of a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic offering free abortions at the Democratic National Convention—which she called “very ritualistic”—showed her the stakes of the election. “I do feel that Harris’ campaign is … against women,” Andridge said. “She is not for women’s rights. She’s a killer.” To Andridge, backing Trump to keep Harris out of office is “the most responsible vote.”

The confident Trump supporter

Christian Collins is a 36-year-old public relations consultant in Montgomery County, Texas. He is the president of a nonprofit targeting conservative youths. After working on Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016, Collins voted for Trump that November and again in 2020. Initially, Collins said he and others didn’t know what to think of Trump but banked on his promises to conservatives—including the promise to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court. “He kept promise after promise,” Collins said, pointing to Trump’s role in appointing the justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade as a token of “his credibility as a pro-life president.”

“I just don’t feel like there’s been anybody better for the pro-life movement than President Trump,” Collins said.

As November approaches, Collins said he finds it frustrating to see other pro-lifers picking apart Trump’s recent comments about abortion. Those who refuse to vote for him despite his track record of supporting pro-life priorities are “throwing their vote away,” he said. He fears the country will turn to communism if Harris is elected. “[Trump is] focusing on the issue that will win him the election,” Collins theorized, adding that the life issue is one that will just antagonize pro-abortion voters to “come out and vote in droves against him.” As for pro-life and Christian voters, to Collins the choice is obvious: “If you’re so pro-life you’re not going to vote for President Trump because he’s not pro-life enough for you after all he’s done for you, you’re an idiot.”

The strategic Trump critic

Paul Brown is a 38-year-old father of three in the Dallas area. He’s the policy director at an abortion abolitionist organization and owns a watch business. Back in 2016, he was involved in sidewalk advocacy outside of abortion facilities and wrote in “Nobody” on that year’s presidential ticket. “I didn’t have a baseline level of trust that Donald Trump was truly conservative,” Brown said. By 2020, he thought Trump had proven he was going to be “much better for the preborn than the Democrat alternative at that time.”

But this year, Brown is undecided. He said that—unless Trump begins pushing for stronger protections for unborn babies—he’s likely to either skip the presidential ticket or write in “Nobody” again. Trump lost Brown’s vote sometime between April and June of this year because of his statements against pro-life state laws. Brown watched as Trump vocally opposed an Arizona law protecting babies from abortion starting at conception; the legislature eventually repealed it.

“He put his finger on the scale on a state-level issue that resulted in a bad outcome for that state,” he said. As someone who is lobbying state lawmakers to pass a law classifying abortion as homicide, that concerns Brown. “We’ve got to demonstrate to him that those kind of comments are costly to him politically.”

Brown holds the conviction that supporting Trump in his current position as a pro-abortion candidate out of fear of Harris’ more radical policies is inconsistent with the Biblical command not to be afraid. He said losing to Harris would be worth sending a message to Republicans that they need to be strong on the life issue. “Four years of Kamala Harris is not going to be as impactful as 40 years of ‘Republican’ being a pro-choice party,” Brown said.

The longtime Trump opponent

Rebecca Carlson, 27, is pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Southern California while working for a pro-life advocacy organization. She voted third party in 2016 because she had concerns about Trump’s character, specifically the way he has spoken about and treated women. She doesn’t remember if she voted third party in 2020 or “plugged my nose and voted for Trump” because of his better track record on abortion at that time—especially his appointment of conservative justices to the Supreme Court. But this year, she’s planning on another third party vote.

“I don’t view Trump as a pro-life candidate right now,” Carlson said, pointing to his comments against a federal abortion ban and pro-life state laws. While she acknowledged that federal abortion policy will likely be more pro-abortion in four years if Harris takes office, she’s concerned about the “long-term” dangers of tying the pro-life movement to Trump or the Republican Party.

“There’s already a perception that pro-lifers are really only … concerned about defending babies as an excuse to support the Republican Party,” Carlson said. “I want to be really clear that that’s not the case, and that gets harder if pro-life people vote for a candidate who is opposed to a large majority of pro-life policy positions.”