Vance Won the Debate, But Here’s Who Really Lost
The tone of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate was so surprisingly civil that it seemed, toward the end, Tim Walz would be happy if J.D. Vance hired him as a staffer.
I kid, but the truth is Republican VP pick Vance was the clear superior, providing strong and credible answers on nearly every issue from the border to the economy to foreign policy, and his disarming, even complimentary demeanor appeared in some measure to win over his Democratic counterpart.
There was a sense, which many in the audience no doubt found refreshing, that our nation may have a future. There may be some unity to find amid our great division.
The Elephant In The Room
But, for all of that, unfortunately, there was an elephant in the room. It was an elephant composed of millions of dead babies’ bodies.
My dear America, we’ve really got to fix our abortion problem, and neither side is talking about it rightly. I mean, of course the Democrats aren’t, but neither are the Republicans. Unfortunately, the children who are murdered in abortion were all but ignored Tuesday night.
When abortion was addressed, Vance talked about how, in the working-class neighborhood where he grew up, he “knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel they didn’t have any other options.” He mentioned one in particular who he said is “very dear” to him, who once told him “that she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”
Quickly: if you’re not getting Project 18:15 in your inbox each week, here’s your chance.
Vance’s takeaway: The Republican Party has “got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us.” That, he says, is what he and Donald Trump are trying to do. He continues:
I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there's so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.
With these comments, he was clearly seeking to reach across the aisle, to express sympathy and to find common ground. The problem is that, on this issue, any common ground we can find does not actually address the problem; it’s a distraction from it.
The Core Issue
This is one issue where, at the core of it, there is not and should not be common ground because life and death, justice and injustice, are diametrical opposites. What, after all, does light have in common with darkness?
I say “at the core of it” because the central issue in abortion is that an innocent human is being intentionally killed. On the periphery, yes, we may do things to help mothers in need. Yes, we may make things easier on families. If it would help, we can do all that, and both sides can agree.
Even as a fiscal conservative, I’d say go ahead, take my taxes and do it—as long as, whatever you do, first and foremost, you establish justice. You protect preborn children with the same laws as every other human. You legally protect them from any unnatural threat to their lives—abortion, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), or whatever else. Anything less is unjust, no matter how you look at it.
That is the core issue, and Democrats will never consent to that.
Offering Help Doesn’t Help Much
Let’s say, as Vance suggests, that we do more to help these women. The fact is that most abortive-minded mothers who are offered help still go through with their abortions. Ginna Cross, director of crisis pregnancy center Alliance Family Services, makes this point in the Foundation to Abolish Abortion’s recent docuseries “Abortion-Free”:
We offer housing, free housing. We offer assistance getting jobs, help with budgeting, help getting childcare, help getting started on insurance—all the different things that are kind of said, “If this was provided, then women wouldn’t have abortions.”
Well, it’s not the case. In some cases, like I said, 35 percent of the time, it makes a difference. But for the other ones, honestly, we could tell them, “Don’t do anything and don’t worry about anything for the next nine months. Sit on my couch. I will pay for everything. I will provide for everything. You don’t have to do a thing. Just carry your baby,” and they would say, “No, I just don’t want to be pregnant.”
So, when I say I would not be opposed to my tax money going to help these people if it would prevent abortions, I mean it, but I honestly don’t think it would help much.
There are charities upon charities already doing that. But pro-abortion advocates don’t want charity. They simply want the choice to kill their babies—“My body, my choice,” even though the child’s body inside a pregnant woman’s body is not her body. The actual solution to this problem is not charity but justice.
Brazen Democrats and Fearful Republicans
On abortion, where Democrats are brazen, Republicans are fearful. The Democrats, appealing to the basest desires of the people, are not afraid to say they want to legalize abortion nationwide. Republicans, on the other hand, since those base desires have gained such a stronghold over the last half century, are afraid to criminalize abortion nationwide.
Case in point, as Vance waxed about how each state has the right to make its own abortion laws, Walz was shaking his head in disagreement. The Democrats believe states shouldn’t have that right; they think there should be one law for the entire nation.
They’re right about that. They’re just on the wrong side of it.
There should, in fact, be one law for the entire nation, and that law should be total criminalization. Full abolition. “You shall not murder” is a moral absolute. Murder cannot be banned in some states and perfectly acceptable in others. It cannot be outlawed in some scenarios and allowed in others.
So, abortion must go the way of the slave trade. Or, we might say, the way of homicide. Just call it what it is and add abortion to the federal homicide code. This would not, mind you, criminalize miscarriages or life-saving operations on the mother (which are not “abortions,” per the Dublin Declaration), and it would include all the usual protections for an accused person, like the presumption of innocence, due process of law, etc. These things are already part and parcel of the law.
You see, the solution to this problem is so simple. The only obstacle is our own wickedness. Regrettably, that is a massive obstacle.
“You Got To Get Elected”
Some people, including former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have argued that you can’t push an agenda if you’re not in power. “You got to get elected,” he said during the first presidential debate back in June. The implication is that to campaign on banning abortion wouldn’t do any good if it loses votes.
But if anyone believes that this means Trump is pulling a wholly cynical play where he plans to reverse course once he’s elected and go harder on abortion than he’s letting on, they’re wishful. I do hope he wins, and I do hope he goes harder on abortion than he’s currently saying—but if he does, it won’t be because he’s planning to. It will be because he changed his mind.
If he were lying and planning to do better than what he says, though I wouldn’t condone the lying, I would prefer it to his stated position. But, frankly, I don’t think he’s as conniving as that, and I don’t think he cares all that much about abortion.
No Defender
As it stands, Trump’s hard and fast position on abortion policy is to leave it up to the states. Kind of. He has opposed some states’ pro-life measures, like Florida’s six-week heartbeat bill, Alabama’s court decision to treat IVF embryos as unborn children, and Arizona’s court decision to uphold a 160-year-old “near-total abortion ban.” This means he’s not as entirely hands-off as his leave-it-to-the-states rhetoric suggests.
In fact, the earliest abortion ban that Trump has ever signaled support for is a 15-week ban. At 15 weeks, at least 96 percent of abortions have already happened. The actual percentage is undoubtedly higher because this figure doesn’t include unrecorded chemical abortions, which are effective through week 11 or so. So, statistically, Trump vs. Democrats on abortion is almost a wash, unfortunately.
It seems that after Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, he figured he’d done enough. He’s delivered all he plans to deliver as far as defending unborn life.
On the other hand, whereas Trump seems apathetic about abortion, the Democrats (and especially their presidential candidate Kamala Harris) are anything but. They are passionate about allowing women every opportunity to murder their preborn children. So, that contrast remains: apathy vs. passion. But either way—between Trump and Harris—the preborn are left with no defender at the highest levels of power.
Off The Table
But, like it or not, Trump’s immoral position—to leave abortion policy up to each state (a position we can’t solely blame him for since that’s what the pro-life establishment told him they wanted) and to be only slightly less radical than the Democrats about which state policies he supports—has done what it intended. It essentially took the abortion issue off the table for this election.
What I mean is that if Trump and Harris are in 96+ percent agreement on which babies should go unprotected, then the only comparison we have is everything else. And on nearly everything else, Trump is far and away the better choice.
Trump’s administration resulted in increased peace around the world, discouraged illegal immigration, and fostered a booming American economy. The Biden-Harris administration has resulted in the opposite on every point, including the Afghanistan debacle, the wars against Ukraine and Israel, millions of illegals flooding the country, and significant economic problems. Their dangerous and morally egregious policy moves have abounded, from targeting parents for protesting school boards to pressuring social media companies to censor information, to seeking to prohibit bans on transgender athletes in school sports, and more.
On these matters, the contrast is stark.
Vote Prudentially
There are Christians who, on account of the abortion issue, say they will refuse to vote for Trump. While I appreciate that these brothers and sisters desire purity, they would do well to desire prudence.
This election is a binary outcome: Trump-Vance or Harris-Walz. When neither ticket aligns with your values on such a consequential matter as defending life, either one will be your adversary. In the election, you get to cast your vote for who you prefer to go toe-to-toe with.
So, who would you prefer to fight with about abortion? Trump or Harris? The one who says he won’t criminalize it federally, or the one who says she will legalize it federally? The one who will work against other injustices, improve other aspects of American life, and help resolve conflicts around the world, or the one who has multiplied those injustices, ushered in those conflicts, and purveyed over the decay of Americans’ welfare and security? The one who has at least some godly people in his proximity, or the one who apparently has no godly influences at all? One of these is a preferable enemy to have.
This argument is not, as some imagine, trading preborn lives for money and comfort. It’s not as though one candidate will improve the economy and the other will abolish abortion. Preborn lives may not be better off one way or the other. That being the case, what sense is there in not opting to improve what can be improved? There are evils other than abortion that may be quashed, allowing us to focus our attention on abortion.
A Rash Vow
I’m reminded of King Saul’s rash vow when he pronounced a curse on anyone who would eat food before they defeated the Philistines at Michmash (1 Samuel 14). The result: the army grew faint, and the victory was not great. Moreover, the one who led them to victory was the one who hadn’t heard the curse, ate, and was re-energized for the fight—Saul’s son, Jonathan.
A Kamala Harris presidency would change this nation, probably irreversibly. It would advance us toward war, economic disaster, censorship, and more, with the presumable goal of communism. If you’re willing to consign yourself to the ravages of a Kamala Harris presidency, which can only make the fight to abolish abortion more difficult, rather than take advantage of what respite will come with a Trump presidency, which will allow you to focus your energies on the fight with fewer obstacles and distractions, perhaps Jonathan would say of you as he did of his father: “My father has troubled the land” (1 Samuel 14:30).
This argument may not persuade those abolitionists who believe that biblical principles firmly forbid them from voting for Trump. I don’t find that position convincing—my reasons for which I will soon explain, Lord willing, in another article.
Cutting Our Losses
I don’t know if Trump’s mind can be changed on abortion. But I know it’s less likely that Harris’s can be. If she had her way and passed a Roe-type federal bill, we’d have a steeper incline to scale in persuading state legislators to abolish abortion since they would be opposing federal law to do so. This is not unlike the situation before Dobbs.
The Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, was not as great of a victory as often celebrated. The judges should have criminalized abortion then and there, per the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. In light of their failure to do so, we’ve only seen abortions increase. But one good thing that came from Dobbs is that cowardly Republican state legislators who refuse to support abortion abolition bills can no longer hide behind a Supreme Court decision as their reason why. If Harris gets her way, we won’t even have that.
The Child, The Child, The Child
To bring this back to Tuesday’s debate, I’ll level with you: I had no expectation that Vance would say anything better on abortion than what he said. It was par for the course. He wouldn’t openly disagree with his running mate even if he had a different view. A house divided cannot stand.
But the fact that this is where we’re at in the public discourse on abortion is sad, to put it mildly. It’s morally abhorrent, to put it more directly.
The kind of milk-toast beating-around-the-bush that Vance did about abortion, tactical though it may have been, ushers in a moral fog where there should be moral clarity. It ignores the true victims, sympathizes with the victimizers, and obfuscates the real injustice.
Let’s do better than this. Any time we talk about abortion, we must never forget the central issue: the murder of a child, our fellow image-bearer of God (Genesis 1:27). That’s what abortion is. That’s why it’s wrong.
Who Really Lost
Aside from this, I generally liked Vance’s performance in the debate and I’m glad everyone on all sides recognized him as the winner. Republicans need to win. They’re not as obviously far gone as Democrats, which means they’re currently the best shot at political change for the good. There is among them a remnant of the faithful.
However, on this issue, which, because of its spiritual significance, is arguably the most crucial issue facing the nation, Vance’s comments fell short, bringing only more darkness and disappointment.
Vance won, but preborn children lost. They are losing every day in the United States, and “God is a righteous judge” who “feels indignation” against us “every day” for this heinous evil (Psalm 7:11). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), which, as things stand, we certainly will do.