Trump's 'Pro-Life Advisory Council' made of those meant to reassure evangelical voters
With the release of the names on Donald Trump’s “Pro-Life Advisory Council, the candidate may be hoping to encourage pro-life voters that he’s their man, said David Brody, who is with the Christian Broadcast Network.
“...the full list released today may indeed give comfort to those remaining evangelicals who are having a tough time making their way to the voting booth this Election Cycle.”
But only 40 percent of the 32 members are women, the rest, like Fr. Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life, can’t get pregnant, and are so extreme in their views that nothing is more important that holding the right position on abortion. Pavone is so down on abortion, in fact, that he once said a president needed to be more concerned with abortion than “poverty, immigration, war and peace, homelessness [and] health care.” Oh yeah, and the atomic bomb.
In response to a caller to a Catholic radio program who said that Trump’s stances on things like nuclear warfare and going after the families of suspected terrorists aren’t exactly pro-life, Pavone said that the potential of Trump dropping an atomic bomb is less dangerous than the certainty of Hillary Clinton continuing the “raging holocaust” of legal abortion.
The names of the 32 who will serve on the council include:
- Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas
- Representative Robert Aderholt (AL-04)
- Ellen Barrosse, Republican National Committeewoman & Chairman of RNC Conservative Steering Committee
- Ed Martin, President of Eagle Forum
- Ralph Reed, Founder and Chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition
- Austin Ruse, President of Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM)
Earlier this month Trump also sent a letter to “pro-life leaders” articulating his plans and outlining the promises he would make to the movement. In one he announced that “Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the anti-choice electoral group Susan B. Anthony List, would spearhead the new anti-abortion coalition for his campaign.”
Dannefelser, who warned her group in January that Trump was unlikely to deliver on the anti-abortion coalition’s goals, is no shrinking violet.
When the House passed a bill last year banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy with a narrow exception for rape and incest survivors, Dannenfelser said that the bill’s rape exception was “regrettable” and “intellectually dishonest,” saying that she’d like to see all abortions banned at “any stage” of pregnancy. In a press conference, Dannenfelser said that although her group supported the legislation, “the rape exception is abominable.”
Here is what Trump promised in his letter to the group:
- Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Signing into law the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.
- Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.
- Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.