Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Donald Trump was elected in 2016 partly on a platform of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1974 decision that cemented abortion for almost half a century as a national institution. His promise of appointing pro-life Supreme Court justices, a strategic effort to solidify the evangelical vote, led to the 2022 Dobb’s Decision, sending the authority for abortion back to the states. And he has been paying for it ever since.

Abortion is the slavery issue of today, providing much of the kindling feeding the fires of division and turmoil. Trump has been accused of flip-flopping and pandering on the issue and draws fire from both extremes of a political spectrum as he navigates the social, moral and legal abortion swamp toward a second presidential term. Abraham Lincoln is revered in hindsight as a political genius for emerging triumphant on the other side of the political swamp of slavery, having endured the criticism of his own flip-flopping on the slavery issue. He was the first to admit it was more accident and Providence that guided his tumultuous campaign against slavery. Trump is already well on his way to following a similar tortured path. But it is a very different demographic today at the mercy of an oppressive American landscape — the unborn. Donald Trump is only following the lead of one Abraham Lincoln when it comes to political savvy and maneuvering through the hot-button issue of the century. Let’s compare.

The middle of the 19th century witnessed an American struggle to define the black slave as a real person — the government described each as only a fraction (three-fifths, actually) and only then for the sake of state representation for their masters in Congress. The 21st-century debate still struggles to peg the reality of an unborn child — just a clump of cells or a potential person. Both institutions underwent a decades-long metamorphosis in their respective eras. Slavery became less and less accepted with the help of an anti-slavery novel that went viral boosting abolitionist activism, and the rise of an unusual American politician who revealed the hypocrisy of claiming freedom to keep slaves. Likewise, abortion, through progress in science, medicine, ultrasound technology (and tireless pro-life activism,) became less accepted in a country whose founding principles boast an inalienable “right to life,” among other things.

For most of his life, Lincoln didn’t think much of slavery. He lived in Illinois, which was not a slave state. He had little reason to challenge the institution, and he did not support anti-slavery measures against states in the South where it was legal. It was the law of the land, Lincoln said, “The Congress of the United States has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in different states.” Similarly, Donald Trump, during his 2016 presidential run said, “The laws are set now on abortion, and that’s the way they’re going to remain until they’re changed.”

Donald Trump was once pro-choice. Lincoln, though never pro-slavery, did represent a slave-owner in 1847 who was seeking to recover his runaway slaves (Matson v. Rutheford.) At the time, slavery was a protected institution, and Lincoln worked as a case lawyer within that framework. Trump worked within the framework of abortion as a protected American institution and admits to and demonstrated a pro-choice stance for most of his adult life. Both presidents would evolve in similar fashion. Lincoln confessed to his good friend Joshua Speed (a slave owner), “You know I dislike slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it…I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil, but I bite my lip and keep quiet.”

Trump revealed a real aversion to abortion in a 1999 Meet the Press interview saying, “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for; I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still, I just believe in choice.”

Abraham Lincoln had burst very Trump-like onto the political stage in 1854 (having retreated years earlier to ordinary life as a country lawyer after a decidedly failed congressional term in DC.) When Democrats began calling for nationwide slavery — ramming legislation through Congress (Kansas-Nebraska Act) that would crazily expand slavery’s boundaries, and using the Supreme Court to deny that black slaves could be American citizens (Dred Scott Decision) Lincoln made it his mission to stand up against them. He objected fiercely to the new philosophy of Popular Sovereignty — a pro-slavery policy pushed by Democrats in an increasingly divided nation. It became the socio-political hot potato of the 1850s, complete with protestors chanting, “My business, my choice!” (What else would they chant?)

Donald Trump in 2015 jumped into the political turmoil of a nation divided by Americans struggling against the politically correct Obama administration’s socialist trajectory and its increasing disregard for free speech, freedom of religion and the 2nd Amendment. The Democrats’ radical left agenda trampled and opposed any abortion boundaries put in place by states — allowing the procedure up to and even beyond birth. Trump challenged this hot potato issue of today’s American politics.

Lincoln could no longer be silent in the face of such bold yet flawed threats to American freedom. And Trump emerged a very vocal and fully pro-life candidate explaining he’d had a change of heart. When asked about his 1999 Meet the Press comments he said, “I’ve very much evolved” on the issue after a friend had a “total superstar” of a child instead of an abortion. He clearly stated his position as early as 2011 when he told the New York Times, “There are certain things that I don’t think can ever be negotiated. Let me put it this way: I am pro-life, and pro-life people will find out that I will be very loyal to them, just as I am loyal to other people. I would be appointing judges that feel the way I feel.”

Lincoln & Trump became very politically radical in their early campaigns against out-of-control political environments. Half of America was reeling from the direction the Democrats were taking the nation — toward universal slavery in Lincoln’s America; toward socialism and limitless abortion in Trump’s.  In October 1854 Abraham Lincoln spoke for three hours in a speech in Peoria, Illinois forcefully explaining his opposition to slavery and the Democrats’ designs to extend it to every nook and cranny of society. He clarified that some men calling the enslavement of others a “sacred right of self-government” was completely at odds with the Declaration’s “all men are created equal.” Lincoln’s passionate Biblical language like “They are as opposite as God and mammon,” and firm stance for liberty placed him in the antislavery camp. Though never an abolitionist, his pre-presidential political rise teetered toward the radical.

Similarly, Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign witnessed a more extreme candidate in 2016. In a townhall in March of that year, he said things like women who have an abortion “should be punished” if the procedure is banned. His later statement that the doctor should be “held legally responsible, not the woman,” and his support for the RNC’s national ban pushed the radical envelope in a pro-choice nation.

Both Republican leaders in different centuries fanned the flames of political hostility. Both boldly identified and unashamedly attacked the absurdities and anti-American policies of the Democrats. But both would put on the brakes when adversaries shot back with ammunition of their own.

When Democrat rival Stephen Douglas accused Lincoln of miscegenation, a distasteful concept to most Americans at the time, the future Great American Emancipator immediately backtracked. In his fourth debate with Douglas in 1858 he softened his position (an arguably racist stand that would haunt Lincoln through the ages) with “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races…I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes…nor to intermarry with white people…And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference…which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together.” Abolitionists were furious with what they called Lincoln’s inconsistencies and hypocrisy, fuming over his “tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent” path forward. The 1860 Republican platform took a moderate stance against slavery — non-interference in states where it was legal, but against its expansion everywhere else. The ultimate freedom fighter Fredrick Douglass often slung angry accusations Lincoln’s way. His Douglass’ Monthly newsletter printed things like “The slaughter of Blacks taken as captives seems to affect him as little as the slaughter of beeves [cows] for the use of his army.” Lincoln’s object was to win not just an election, but also a war. His political ingenuity (labeled ignorant and inept by the abolitionists) would continue to dodge emancipation for several more years, upstaging freedom with public opinion.

Donald Trump has adjusted to the hyper-agitated political mood of the nation after the Supreme Court overturned the sacred Democrat stronghold Roe v. Wade in 2022. Moderating a pro-life stance with dodges like, “It’s not on the ballot (2020),” and “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case the law of the state (2024).” Trump simultaneously called out Republican pro-life critics by posting on social media things like, “Lindsey, Marjorie and others fought for years, unsuccessfully, until I came along and got the job done.” Conservative, pro-life activism (like Douglass’ abolitionism in the 19th century) takes a hard-line stand against abortion with little regard for ballot box success. Trump wants to win in 2024, and has maneuvered very Lincoln-like to diffuse the political ammunition used by the Democrats, especially the accusations of a Republican “war on women.”

Trump inflames leaders on both sides of the issue. His influence in simplifying and MAGA-fying the 2024 RNC Platform by altering anti-abortion language and eliminating the desire for a national ban, drew swift and fierce fire from evangelicals troubled by the changes. “We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said the president of the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser. Lindsey Graham of S.C., a MAGA ally, “respectfully” disagreed with Trump in an X post. Trump’s own recently moderate personal abortion stand was regarded as “disappointing,” as well — “Like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times,” he said.  Reading the still deeply unpopular state-enacted bans on abortion (post Roe v. Wade) as a sign of the public’s general resistance to abolishing it, echoes Lincoln’s same concerns with slavery. The nation is not ready…yet.

Trump’s and Lincoln’s political paths in navigating the slavery/abortion conflicts converge in similarity within their own politically challenging (to say the least) campaigns and presidencies. Savvy maneuvering through hostile political landscapes and the wielding of influential power over a divided nation and its people define both men. The political game in both centuries had morphed into something more vicious than political mudslinging.

Lincoln saw it coming when he spoke of “A house divided against itself…” In 1860 the two sides declared all-out war. In 2020 it was not just tempers flaring in the streets of American cities during the “Summer of Love.” And most recently trying desperately to imprison one’s political opponents (even succeeding in some cases) is hitting way below the belt. Hate is a uniquely human trait that tends to feed on itself and runs rampant until beaten back by leaders tough, brave and resilient enough to weather the storm. If Civil War was really restitution for “every drop of blood” of slavery — as Lincoln thought — the 13th Amendment came at a high price to the nation. Will America survive the storm that would rage on a Trump path to Life?

Gretchen Wollert is the author of Born To Fight: Lincoln & Trump and The Magic & Mayhem of Donald Trump

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• Trump: Just following Lincoln’s lead - August 23, 2024

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