Abortion is back: back in the news, back in the American political scene, back in the fights that rage through a party as it tries to understand itself. Last time we saw this, it was during Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination, when three months in a row—February, March, and April of 2016—he fumbled questions about abortion. He recovered in May, releasing a list of potential Supreme Court nominees that satisfied the pro-life portion of the Republican base.
Trump was right to sense that he needed to secure his position on abortion, even during an election in which abortion mattered less than in any election of the past 40 years. In the midst of all the anger of the populist voters, the fury at what they called the Republican establishment, one thing that would have derailed Trump's campaign was a consensus that he was not pro-life. And after winning the presidency, he has more or less kept his promises, nominating Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch in January and signing a bill in April to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood. Still, just as abortion was not at the center of his campaign, so abortion has not been at the center of his politics since his election.
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