We all know that the president and his supporters like to trumpet that he and his administration are “the most pro-life ever”. But, as the great Alfred E. Smith used to say, “let’s look at the record”. And particularly, let’s look at the last few years and see what the vice president is on record supporting.

• In 2024, the president and vice president ran on the first Republican Party platform in half a century that omitted a clear call for the defense of human life in law. In fact, the president insisted that such language be removed from the platform. Instead, lukewarm language was inserted that merely said that states are free to ban abortion, but didn’t even encourage them to do so. That commits the vice president to a functionally pro-abortion position because it recognizes the legitimacy of states choosing to keep abortion legal.
• The same platform endorsed “policies that advance… IVF (fertility treatments)”. While some fertility treatments respect the dignity of life and the sanctity of marriage, IVF is a dehumanizing and deadly process that has resulted in the freezing and killing of untold numbers of human beings. IVF is functionally a form of abortion, and has been repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church, of which the vice president is a baptized member.
• Since coming into office, the administration has demonstrated strong support for the expansion of IVF. The president directed his agencies to devise ways to make it more available and affordable. That would mean even more human beings manufactured and then destroyed if they don’t fit the buyers’ specifications and needs.
• During the campaign, the vice president specifically stated his support for the availability of mifepristone, the drug that serves only one purpose — to kill an unborn child. Here is what he said: “The Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication [chemical abortion]. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.” He thereby endorsed the mechanism by which two-thirds of abortions are being perpetrated — well over 600,000 children a year are killed by the abortion drug. His position is the same as Planned Parenthood and every other abortion advocate.
• The administration has continued to support the availability of the abortion drug by telemedicine and mail order, despite the fact that mailing abortion drugs is specifically forbidden by federal law. That makes it a matter for the federal government — that is to say, the president and his administration — to enforce, not the states. A truly pro-life administration would have immediately taken steps to limit the availability of the drug and prosecuted those who violate the law by mailing it. Yet the administration has done nothing about it, which allows the lawless abortion industry to operate with impunity.
• The administration has promised to review the safety of the abortion drug. But that is being conducted by the federal agency headed by an open and ardent supporter of legal abortion. To date, they have done nothing to restrict the drug, despite numerous studies showing its risks for mothers, not to mention its deadly effect on unborn children.
• The president recently called on Congress to be “flexible” about including the Hyde Amendment in health care reform proposals. That law, which bans the use of federal tax dollars for elective abortions, has in place for fifty years and is a bedrock of the pro-life cause. Studies prove that limiting taxpayer funding has a direct effect on reducing the number of abortions. Supporting the Hyde Amendment is the bare minimum that we would expect of a pro-life politician. The elimination of the Hyde Amendment has long been one of the highest priorities of the pro-abortion movement. Any “flexibility” on the Hyde Amendment is unambiguously a pro-abortion position. Any “flexibility” on the Hyde Amendment is unambiguously a pro-abortion position that can only please Planned Parenthood and others who profit from the deaths of children.
• The vice president, in his earlier campaign for the Senate, declared himself to be pro-life. But obviously something has changed, because he now supports and represents the record of the current administration — which is functionally pro-abortion in effect and in rhetoric.

But the full record shows that the president and vice president are functionally pro-abortion.

Our highest moral obligation is always to tell the truth. And the truth is that the decision to have the vice president as a featured speaker at the March for Life Rally is a grave mistake. It misleads people to believe the falsehood that he and the administration are pro-life and it damages our movement’s credibility as witnesses to an unequivocally pro-life cause.

I’m happy and proud to go to the March this year, as I have done for decades. But I’ll skip the Rally and its pro-abortion speaker.