Is That Pro-Life Enough For You?

In the 1970s and 80s, I was an activist in the anti-abortion cause. In fact, I produced a film series with Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, and my late father, Francis Schaeffer, called Whatever Happened to the Human Race, that most historians of American politics and religious life credit—if you want to put it that way—with the beginning of the Protestant evangelical involvement in what had been a Catholic cause: the pro-life movement.

So I have a question for you. I have a question for MAGA voters. I have a question for evangelicals who voted for Trump twice. I have a question for the 83% of the white evangelicals who voted for Trump. I have a question for the pro-life Roman Catholics at the Heritage Foundation. Is this pro-life enough for you?

Trump has deported a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old—American citizens—without any due process because their mother was not born in this country, and sent them off to Central and South American countries. An American citizen child—a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a four-year-old.

The measles outbreak in Texas is a direct result of the conspiracist theories circulating on right-wing media—MAGA media, evangelical media—run by mothers and parents of children who now believe vaccines are suspect, that they cause autism and other stupid, unscientific conclusions. Is that pro-life enough for you, that children are dying of measles in West Texas and that it’s going to spread across the country? Do you know that measles had been eliminated as a childhood disease, as a threat, along with polio?

By the way, my left leg looks like a toothpick because I got polio in 1952 and wasn’t vaccinated. I got it on shipboard with my parents traveling back from a missionary furlough in Europe in 1954. I know what not vaccinating does. Is that pro-life enough for you, that we have a measles outbreak killing little children in West Texas—and soon all over America—as the anti-vax movement ensures more children will die? All because Donald Trump put this ridiculous Kennedy with a brain worm in power to question the scientists who had eliminated measles. Is that pro-life enough for you?

And what about the women who no longer have abortion available to them, who will be prosecuted when the Heritage Foundation, with their Project 2025, turns the accusation of having had an abortion into a murder accusation? When they’re in prison doing life sentences, and their doctors face penalties up to and including the death penalty—which is what the most extreme anti-abortion fanatics, now empowered by Donald Trump, are advocating—is that pro-life enough for you?

Is it pro-life enough for you that aid to children around the world has been cut to the point where—this is not an exaggeration—millions of children’s lives are at risk now because American aid has been cut? Because of Elon Musk, who by the way—Is he pro-life enough for you with his 12 to 30 children? Twelve to thirty children by six to fifteen different women?

Why the disparity in the numbers? Well, the Wall Street Journal did an investigative report of at least six to nine mothers who have borne him children—women he hits up on, then abandons, then sues and stops child support to if they don’t do exactly what he says. For instance, he wanted to put them all in a compound, many wives and concubines like some great Persian aristocrat three, four, five thousand years ago. Is that pro-life enough for you?

There is a total betrayal of the pro-life movement now by the Trump people. The lies he tells about health systems, the lies told about vaccines, about women who have abortions, about doctors who take care of them, about the children he’s deporting—a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a four-year-old. And this is only the first taste of his program to deny citizenship to kids born here. Do you understand that? Deny citizenship to American children born here. He’s already deporting them. Is that pro-life enough for you?

The pro-life movement has been betrayed. If I were still an ardent pro-lifer—which I am not, I believe in choice—I would still be giving you this same message today.

Oh, how far the evangelical right and the Roman Catholic conservatives have fallen. Oh, how you have been misled. Oh, how you’ve been lied to. And now there are children dying in West Texas. Children dying all over the globe because aid has been cut. And truth has been cut.

Is that pro-life enough for you, that the Voice of America and all our programs—programs that were the only lifeline of truth, medical facts, science, environmental information not controlled by people like Vladimir Putin—are closed now, as Trump does favors to his dictator friends? Is that pro-life enough for you?

Is it pro-life enough for you that Donald Trump now has made an alliance with Vladimir Putin against Ukraine? Vladimir Putin, who had his troops rape their way across the country, kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian babies and children from raped mothers and transporting them to Russia to be given as adoptive infants to Russian parents. Is that pro-life enough for you?

How the pro-life movement has been betrayed. What traitors you evangelicals who voted for Trump are to the pro-life children, to the babies.

And what of children conceived here in America? Nothing is done for them while Medicaid is being cut for millions of Americans, if Trump gets his way. And Medicare cut for the elderly. And Social Security attacked—the very framework that people my age have counted on, built on a lifetime of contributions. Is that pro-life enough for you?

Who are these arrogant billionaires doing this lickspittle’s work for him? Who are these people who bound themselves to Trump with photos taken at his inauguration? Is that pro-life enough for you?

Who are these men? Look at what Facebook has done. Look at what social media has done to your children. Is the porn your sons and daughters are watching when they’re 10, 11, 8, 9 years old—learning to choke out a girl—thanks to tech buffoons who built algorithms to attract children to pornography, to attract perverts to child porn—Is that pro-life enough for you?

These are Trump’s enablers. These are his buddies. They built these systems. They built these algorithms. And as we push back and try to get iPhones and phones out of schools, who do you think we’re pushing back against—except these smiling cretins who lined up to get their pictures taken with Donald Trump? Is that pro-life enough for you?

This anti-family tech elite—these tech bros who don’t give a crap about you and me—is that pro-life enough for you?

Stop. Think. Trump is not the person to carry the flag of the pro-life movement. He has betrayed us.

When a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old can be taken from their mother and deported to another country—or deported with their mother without due process—children who were born here, like your children were if you’re an American…

Is that pro-life enough for you?