Lila Rose, president of the pro-life advocacy group Live Action, tweeted: “Trump is way out of line here on life. He does not have a pulse on where his potential base is — as many believed he has in the past.”
“This kind of nonsense will be a losing political strategy for him,” she wrote in the Jan. 2 tweet.
Kristan Hawkins, president of the pro-life organization Students for Life, wrote in a Jan. 2 tweet that Trump “needs to be corrected” on his statement.
“This November, leaders like [Florida] Gov. Ron DeSantis, [North Carolina] Sen. Ted Budd, and [Florida] Sen. Marco Rubio, who proudly talked about their pro-life convictions, won in landslides. Meanwhile, Trump-backed politicians like Dr. Mehmet Oz & Blake Masters, who had challenges clearly defining their convictions, failed to win votes,” she wrote.
Her string of tweets can be read here.
Trump announced this past November that he is running for president in 2024.
In his Nov. 15 candidacy announcement, he made no mention of his many pro-life victories while in office from 2017–2021, CNN reported. Instead, he focused on several different issues such as the economy, inflation, gas prices, immigration, foreign policy, and the southern border crisis, among other topics.
In an interview with CNN in November, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said that she was surprised that Trump did not mention his pro-life accomplishments in his campaign announcement.
She was surprised because she said the former president “raised the bar very high for what it meant to be a pro-life president.”
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“It’s a deep moral failure not to step up in the most important moment for our movement, and if you think you can breeze through Iowa and South Carolina without a strong pro-life national vision, you’re just wrong,” Dannenfelser said.
Hawkins told CNN: “For sure it was a missed opportunity.”
“We expect to be courted in the primary process and the person we want to get behind will be unapologetic in speaking up to defend the pre-born and calling for federal protections,” she said.
Joseph Bukuras is a journalist at the Catholic News Agency. Joe has prior experience working in state and federal government, in non-profits, and Catholic education. He has contributed to an array of publications and his reporting has been cited by leading news sources, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the Catholic University of America. He is based out of the Boston area.
