Former President Donald Trump‘s campaign announced a “Catholics for Trump” coalition on Wednesday, established for “safeguarding the vital principles of religious liberty and defending family values that President Donald J. Trump has ardently championed.”
“Unlike the Harris-Biden administration, which has systematically undermined these fundamental rights, President Trump has stood unwaveringly in defense of the foundational principles of Catholicism,” the campaign said.
The Catholics for Trump website features a photo of Trump and his wife, Melania, walking up to the alter of a church, as well as a famous image showing Trump holding up a Bible outside a church across the street from the White House, which was taken after that church was set ablaze during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
There is merch with the slogan “Believers for Trump” as well.
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“In our lifetime, no president has done more to advance and defend religious freedom than President Donald J. Trump,” said former US Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich. America needs President Trump back in the White House to protect and preserve our God-given right to worship freely at home and abroad.”
President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests the night before.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
The site lists Trump’s “accomplishments for Catholics,” such as declaring Jan. 20, 2019 the National Sanctity of Human Life Day, receiving the endorsement of faith leaders, and signing an executive order to ensure religious institutions can “freely advocate for candidates and causes in line with their values by relaxing enforcement of the Johnson Amendment.”
One issue that is glaringly missing, however, is the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion that had been, for many Catholics, a decades-long quest that ended in success after Trump was able to appoint three conservatives to the Supreme Court during his term.
Trump has since acknowledged privately that abortion is a “bad issue” for the party, and has since framed it as a state’s rights issue, even saying he would not support a national abortion ban.
More recently, Republican nominee has gone further, saying in an interview with NBC News that if re-elected, his administration would protect in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and even go so far as to have the government pick up the cost, a policy flip-flop that has drawn sharp criticism from pro-life Catholics.
The two largest religious groups in the US, Catholics and Southern Baptists, both formally oppose IVF. Many other Americans also reject it as immoral. It seems ill-advised for a political campaign to mandate that so many likely voters support something they consider gravely evil.
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) August 30, 2024
“We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump said. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has pointed toward Trump’s “long history of hostility toward IVF and women’s reproductive freedom.”
“Because of Donald Trump, women relying on IVF are losing their chance to grow their families out of fear the state will take control of their embryos. It’s a nightmare straight out of Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said. “If he wins this November, it will only get worse.”
In 2017, while Trump was in office, the House passed legislation to ban abortions in most cases. The former President called on the Senate to approve the 20-week ban bill, though it never did.
But Trump was still able to deliver the pro-life movement’s signature request. Over his four years in office, he nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barret, and in 2022, a conservative-majority Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade.
Women’s clinic in vitro fertilization on September 5,1980 in New York, New York. Insurance coverage of IVF varies by state law.
Santi Visalli/Getty Images
Harris’s campaign hosted a press call last week on “Donald Trump’s Threat to Reproductive Freedom, Including IVF”, bringing another aspect of reproduction rights to the center of the election.
The event spotlighted Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Reproductive Freedom for All President Mini Timmaraju and Alabama mother Latorya Beasley.
“American women are not stupid, and we know the only guarantee protection for IVF is a new national law, which Kamala Harris supports and Donald Trump opposes,” Warren said. “Anyone who cares about IVF will vote for Kamala Harris for president and Democrats for Congress.”
An overwhelming majority of Americans — more than 85% — believe that IVF should be legal, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll from March.
Armed with that polling data, the Harris campaign announced Friday morning a “reproductive freedom bus tour” across a handful of battleground states. The “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” tour kicked off in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday — just outside Mar-a-Lago — with Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, Republican strategist Ana Navarro, Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and reproductive rights storyteller Anya Cook.
Attendees cheer as speakers arrive at an event kicking off a national “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” by the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024, in Boynton Beach, Fla. The 50-stop tour intended to motivate voters launched in Palm Beach County, where Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, is located.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo
Throughout the tour, others will join the talk, like reproductive rights storytellers Amanda Zurawski, Hadley Duvall and Kaitlyn Joshua. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz will also make appearances.
“This election is about freedom—and the American people want and deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions,” the campaign said.
“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back. As we crisscross the country, we’ll be driving that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”
The bus will make at least 50 stops in key states, hitting both blue and red communities. The talks will highlight Harris and Walz’s plan to restore the Roe protections as well as hammer what the Project 2025 agenda entails for abortion, birth control and IVF.
Many parents and psychologists previously shared with Newsweek their concern that a second Trump term would threaten IVF access, despite the candidate’s recent pivot toward embracing the procedure.
“Harris and Walz, I think they would be moving forward as much as they could with this issue…It is going to be our best shot at restoring some sort of reproductive health care nationally,” Amelia Swanson, a health system clinician at Northwestern University, told Newsweek. “Minimally, I hope it stops some of the loss of rights.”
