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(LifeSiteNews) – Recently, former President Donald Trump was a guest on a CNN town hall event, where he was invited to dive into political topics leading up to the 2024 United States presidential election. It was time to see how the man whom many have called America’s most pro-life president addressed the nation’s most deeply polarizing issue. To the truly committed pro-life observer, the man whose judicial appointees brought about the demise of Roe v. Wade, received a failing grade.

One of the questions asked was in regard to Donald Trump’s stance on abortion, specifically, his support for a national abortion ban. Trump answered the way you would expect a politician to answer, trying to please as many people as he could – all while missing the whole point of being truly pro-life.

Moderator Kaitlan Collins asked the question, if Trump were back in the oval office, would he sign a federal abortion ban into law?

“I would negotiate so that people are happy,” stated Trump.

For the next few minutes, Trump repeated his intentions to negotiate, hammering home the fact that to him, to the GOP, and to the GOP donors, abortion is merely a political issue. A topic the GOP will use as a negotiating factor.

“I want to do what’s right…we want to do what’s right for everybody,” Trump announced to the town hall audience. “For the first time, people that are pro-life have negotiating capability.”

For those of us who have worked in this movement long enough, we know exactly what “negotiating capability” means. It means abortion WITH exception and WITH compromise. But why would a pro-life president, who some have called the pro-life movement’s best president ever, advocate for abortion exceptions and abortion compromise? I can think of two reasons.

The first is polling numbers. Remember, Trump wants to make the most people happy. A June 2022 Gallup poll on abortion shows that 50 percent of Americans want legal abortion in some cases, that is, they desire exceptions and compromises. It makes sense from a political standpoint that Trump would put his stock where half of the popular vote lies, thus signing into law a ban that still allows for exceptions and compromise.

The reality of this is a stark one. Human dignity and preborn lives don’t really matter to Trump or to the GOP on an elemental level. What they really care most about is the vote. Perhaps if the preborn could vote this reality would be different. But it’s not.

The second reason is one that provides a bit of hope, but also requires work on the part of all of us in the pro-life community. It is entirely possible that Trump does not understand why abortion exceptions and compromise are wrong, and in that, he would not be alone. The same Gallup poll reports that a paltry 13 percent of voters want abortion to be illegal in all cases, meaning that Trump fits in with the other 87 percent, who do not see the problem with compromising on the life of the preborn.

This is largely a failure on the part of the entire pro-life movement.

Abortion is not a political issue, it’s a matter of conversion.

Instilling in Americans the desire to protect human life at all costs will not change with a partial abortion ban or even the total outlawing of abortion. These measures may help incrementally, but will not solve the greater issue – the degradation of (and lack of respect for) human life. This cannot be solved politically, no matter how hard we try.

What Trump and his fellow 87 percent are missing is that it is not our responsibility to decide at what stage of gestation we could or should justify an abortion. It’s not our responsibility to deem a child that is conceived in wedlock more worthy of life than one conceived in the violence of rape. It’s not our responsibility to condemn a child with fetal abnormalities to death.

Humanity has forgotten its place; we are not the author of life. That is God, and God alone.

Our job is to love our fellow man and stand for the total protection of humanity. Sometimes this is not easy. It’s not easy to tell a mother who has conceived in rape that she should carry her child to term. It’s not easy to tell a new mom that her preborn child most likely will not survive after birth.

But protecting the preborn is what we would call a hard truth.

Loving our fellow man means making choices that may not be easy for us but that result in what is the best for another. This is real love, this is self-sacrificing love, this is the love that Christ displayed for us on the cross.

Being truly pro-life does not mean that you rejoice over a greater ability to negotiate on the House floor or in the Senate.

To be truly pro-life is to love selflessly, just as God has called us to do.

Katie Brown is the Director of Communications for the American Life League, which has been part of the pro-life abortion debate since its inception.

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