Politics

What Conservatives Are Now Demanding From the White House

January 26th 2017

There's a growing movement among conservatives to obtain something specific from President Donald Trump: a Supreme Court justice who will vote to make abortion illegal. 

donald-trumpAP/Evan Vucci - apimages.com

Trump's two reported top contenders for the vacant seat on the court, left by deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, are judges William Pryor and Diane Sykes. Both are conservative, but some anti-abortion activists argue one of them isn't conservative enough. They want to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal in the U.S., and their preference is for Pryor, who is widely regarded to be strong opponent of abortion

ScalilaWikimedia - wikimedia.org

Andrew Schlafly, president of the Legal Defense of Life, wrote an open letter in December declaring Sykes' record (and that of other rumored contenders) as not "pro-life." 

Schlafly lamented that Sykes and other potential nominees "either ruled against the pro-life position or has otherwise shown an unwillingness to be publicly pro-life." The letter was also signed by dozens of anti-abortion activists. As a federal judge, Sykes struck down an Indiana law in 2012 that would have stripped state funds from Planned Parenthood; she also sent two anti-abortion protesters to jail for cementing their legs to the front of a car. 

Anti-abortion activists from all over the country are banding together. 

Trump has already signed an anti-abortion executive order that ban non-governmental organizations that provide or even talk about abortion from receiving U.S. aid.

Anti-abortion activists from all over the country will attend the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., this Friday. Vice President Mike Pence and Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway are both scheduled to speak.  

“A new day is dawning for the right-to-life movement in 2017,” Leo LaLonde, president of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which organized a march in St. Paul., told the Star Tribune. “The 2016 election all across the nation has brought us new hope and new responsibility.”

People tweeted their support for the March for Life. 

Last week's heavily attended Women's March was heavily pro-choice, and by some measures the most popular protest in U.S. history, with millions taking part in actions across the country. That's putting pressure on organizers of the March for Life to get their own attendance up.

“We’re definitely pulling out all the stops this year to try to get people to come,” Amelia Irvine, president of Georgetown Right to Life at Georgetown University, told The New York Times

RELATED: Anti-Choice Activists Using New Method to Target Women Considering Abortions

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