The anti-abortion activist calls on his supporters to turn their backs on Trump

Among the more than 67 million people who watched the first U.S. presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was Lila Rose.

The young and charismatic founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action had high hopes for the Republican candidate: a courageous commitment to opposition to abortion and a promise to translate this conviction into law.

She was quickly disappointed. Trump criticized the Democrats’ “extreme” abortion policies, but refused to take a position on a national ban. Instead, he said the issue should be left to the states.

And he described himself as a “pioneer” of the IVF movement. This brought him into conflict with Ms. Rose and many members of her movement who oppose the procedure because it often destroys embryos.

“It was painful to watch,” Ms. Rose said of Trump’s appearance.

Rose, 36, has always had reservations about Trump’s credible stance on abortion, after years of shifting his position (including an earlier declaration that he was pro-choice) and his openness to what she called “worrying compromises.” But she, like most in her movement, had been emboldened by his first term and the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court nominees who overturned Roe v. Wade and ended nationwide abortion rights.

Then Trump changed course, and their disappointment with the former president grew. Now, in his third attempt at the White House, Trump seems to be trying to appeal to all sides.

He hinted that he would sign a federal abortion bill before later reversing it. He called the nationwide restrictions that went into effect after Roe v. Wade “a wonderful thing.” But he later said bans on abortion in early pregnancy went too far and said Republican candidates needed to be moderate enough on the issue to “win elections.”

This summer, the former president released a statement online during the Democratic National Convention saying his incoming administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights” – a typical phrase used by abortion advocates.

By the end of August, Ms. Rose had had enough and told her more than one million followers that Trump was making it “impossible” to vote for him.

“It’s very clear that Trump is less pro-abortion than Kamala Harris,” she told the BBC on Thursday. “But the goal of our movement is not to simply accept the least bad candidate and fight for him. Our goal is to support candidates who stand up for the unborn.”

The defection of Ms. Rose, one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-abortion movement, points to a potential problem with Trump’s new strategy. As Trump tries to become more moderate on the abortion issue, he risks alienating some of his socially conservative voters. And if those voters stay home in November, it could cost Trump the White House in an election that could be decided by a razor-thin margin.

“If such a strategy works, you can be everything to everyone,” says Mary Ziegler, legal historian and expert on the US abortion debate. “And if it no longer works, you end up being nothing to anyone.”

His campaign team did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Trump won over social conservatives in 2016 and again in 2020. He joined anti-abortion activists and supported their movement. He was the first sitting president to participate in the March for Life, the largest annual anti-abortion demonstration in the country.

He championed social conservatives in a way that few Republican presidents had done before, Ms Ziegler said.

“I think Trump was always aware in his first two elections that he would be politically lost without the movement,” she said. “So he cared about it a lot more.”

In turn, these voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump. In 2020, 84 percent of white evangelical Christians – some of the most socially conservative voters in the country – supported the former president. In 2016, the figure was already 77 percent.

But Trump, reportedly unsettled by his party’s poor showing in the 2022 midterm elections – which he and many analysts attributed to the failure of Roe v. Wade – and aware of broad public support for abortion access, seemed more accommodating on the issue this time around.

When the Republican primaries began earlier this year, he had already begun criticizing the abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy and promised to find a national standard that would please everyone. “I will please both sides,” he said last year.

And when Trump was confronted with further questions about the White House’s abortion policies this summer, he could not agree on an answer.

He said he wanted a national “standard” for abortion, but has since backed away from any commitment. He said he believed in the authority of states over abortion policy, but has intervened in several interstate disputes over abortion, often against social conservatives.

He spoke out against Florida’s six-week abortion ban, saying they “need more than six weeks” and seemed to indicate he would vote for a November referendum that would protect abortion in the state. A day later, after intense pressure from anti-abortion activists, he said he would vote against it.

These contortions have strained relations with important anti-abortion allies.

“This is troubling for our students and for our movement,” said Kristan Hawkins, director of Students for Life, one of the largest anti-abortion organizations in the country. “And what I have personally communicated to the campaign is that this strategy is not a winning strategy.”

Even within the social conservative movement, more and more voices are taking this view: By taking a centrist stance on the abortion issue, Trump could lose voters he absolutely needs to win without actually winning over new voters.

“The frustration for pro-lifers is that Trump is saying things that he thinks will ultimately reach more moderate voters, which, frankly, is not going to work,” said Matt Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based anti-abortion group Liberty Counsel. “And in doing that, he is causing consternation among other voters who are otherwise on his side. There’s no point in him engaging in that.”

There are no signs that Trump is facing a broad exodus of social conservatives from his party, and both Mr Staver and Ms Hawkins said they would continue to vote for Trump.

But in an election that could hinge on a small portion of voters in just a handful of states, some experts say Trump’s vacillation on abortion policy could still cost him the election.

Republican strategist John Feehery estimates that about 80 percent of white evangelical Christians – who make up about 14 percent of the American electorate – would have to vote for Trump to win.

“I don’t think there’s a danger of white evangelicals voting for Harris. I think there’s a real danger of them not voting,” Feehery said, adding that “10,000 votes” could be enough to make the difference.

This risk may explain the reluctance of most anti-abortion activists to speak publicly about turning their backs on the Republican candidate.

In fact, some in the movement expressed frustration with Ms. Rose’s stance, saying that while Trump was not the ideal candidate, he was still better suited to their cause than any Democratic opponent.

Hawkins, of Students for Life, is increasingly targeting Harris in her messaging, telling supporters that the damage her administration could do – the number of abortions alone – would dwarf any misstep by Trump.

“I know we can work with his government,” she said. “If you believe, as the pro-lifers do, that babies who have a right to be born are dying, then I cannot morally afford to sit through this.”

Yet Ms. Rose has shrugged off any criticism that her position might inadvertently help Harris and her staunchly pro-choice agenda. For her, “good enough” is not good enough when it comes to abortion and Donald Trump.

“I know this is painful for many of you to hear, for people who want to go out and happily vote for Trump because Kamala Harris is such a disaster… but we have to tell the truth,” she told her supporters the morning after the debate.

“Abortion is the innocent killing of a human child,” she said. “We must speak out against it.”