Trump vows to be 'side by side' with group that wants abortion 'eradicated' – The Washington Post
The Republican presidential candidate gave virtual remarks to the Danbury Institute, a Christian group that has compared abortion to “child sacrifice.”
Former president Donald Trump pledged Monday to walk “side by side” with the Danbury Institute, a coalition of Christian groups that opposes abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, and has called the procedure “child sacrifice.”
Trump’s taped remarks to the Danbury Institute’s Life & Liberty Forum on Monday did not include any specifics on abortion policy. But he told the group that it was time to “defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
“These are difficult times for our nation, and your work is so important,” Trump said. “We can’t afford to have anyone sit on the sidelines. Now is the time for us all to pull together and stand up for our values and our freedoms. And you just can’t vote Democrat — they’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular.”
Trump’s remarks once again pushed abortion into the spotlight as he and President Biden — their respective parties’ presumptive presidential nominees — remain locked in a tight race in which reproductive rights have been a critical issue.
Biden’s campaign repeatedly called out Trump’s plans to speak to the group, highlighting a section on the Danbury Institute’s website that states: “Abortion must be ended. We will not rest until it is eradicated entirely.”
The Christian group has also asserted in statements that “abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother” and that “aborting an innocent child conceived in rape or incest only compounds the injustice and pain caused by the initial crime.”
“If you want to know who Trump will fight for in a second term, look at who he’s spending his time speaking to: anti-abortion extremists who call abortion ‘child sacrifice’ and want to ‘eradicate’ abortion ‘entirely,’” Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement Monday.
Trump’s remarks Monday, which lasted about two minutes, did not go into specific policy details. The former president promised that, if he was reelected, the Danbury Institute would “make a comeback like just about no other group.”
“I know what’s happening. I know where you’re coming from and where you’re going. And I’ll be with you side by side,” Trump said.
In an emailed statement Friday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s plans to deliver virtual remarks to the Danbury Institute.
“President Trump is committed to addressing groups with diverse opinions on all of the issues, as evidenced by his recent speech at the Libertarian Convention, his meetings with the unions, and his efforts to campaign in diverse neighborhoods across the country,” she wrote.
When asked about anything related to reproductive rights, Trump has lately defaulted to saying it should be left to the states, as he attempts to walk a fine line on an issue that has been shown to motivate Democratic voters. However, Trump has also continued to take credit for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Trump himself has been clear about where he stands: He thinks bans without exceptions are ‘a beautiful thing,’ he’s ‘proud’ to have overturned Roe, and he said there must be ‘punishment’ for women who have an abortion,” Chitika said Monday. “A second Trump term is sure to bring more extreme abortion bans with no exceptions, women punished for seeking the care they need, and doctors criminalized for providing care.”
Introducing Trump on Monday, Danbury Institute CEO Scott Colter praised the former president, recalling his elation when a draft opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court was on the verge of overturning Roe leaked in 2022.
“That was something that I had been praying for, for the entirety of my Christian life,” Colter said. “That was the goal of the pro-life movement and the sanctity of life movement that we really never thought we would see come to reality in this country — and yet that had been accomplished by the Supreme Court justices that were named and appointed by President Trump a couple of years earlier.”
Colter also recalled how he and other leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention had been heavily criticized for supporting Trump in 2016, but how he felt that his decision was “vindicated” because Trump had helped overturn Roe.
“We took a risk on what he said he would do, and he came through and he delivered in that case,” Colter said. “And so we can debate all day long the merits of who Donald Trump is and his personality and all of those different things. But he did what he said he would do. … And I’m tremendously grateful for that.”
A program for the Danbury Institute event on Monday stated that the forum would explore “topics surrounding life and liberty and especially how churches can change the course of a country,” as well as “opportunities to grow our coalition as we uphold the Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was built.”
Other speakers in the lineup for the Life & Liberty Forum included figures from the Southern Baptist Convention and former Kansas governor Sam Brownback, who served as Trump’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom and who was slammed by Democrats and liberal groups for his anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
Candi Finch, an associate professor of theology at Truett McConnell University, suggested at the forum that transgenderism was a “foreign ideology that goes against God’s blueprint,” even though the word transgender did not appear in the Bible.
“There are people in your churches who have been catechized on social media and Tik Tok and cartoons, and they’re wrestling with this,” Finch said, largely addressing pastors. “And there was a study done about 15 years ago that why teenagers, one of the reasons they’re leaving the church is they said they could not ask their most pressing questions. They didn’t feel comfortable doing that in church. And we need to — in church, in your sphere of influence — welcome that conversation so they can see what the Bible says about this.”
Another speaker, David Tran, executive director of a home-school program, recounted how his 9-year-old son recently came to him with a “Minecraft” book that talked about two women getting married.
“First of all, proud dad moment, right? Like the fact that he was able to discern something that wasn’t true,” Tran said. “But then at the same time, it kind of reminded us that Satan’s coming after our kids in so many different directions.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
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Reproductive rights: The Senate voted to block a bill to create a federal right to contraception access. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, far-right conservatives have been trying to curtail birth-control access by sowing misinformation about how various methods work to prevent pregnancy. See how every senator voted on the Right to Contraception Act.
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