EXCLUSIVE: Here's the Anti-Abortion Group Pulling Trump’s Strings

New documents show where Trump's 'post-birth' abortion lie comes from

When Donald Trump claims that Democrats support ‘post-birth’ abortion—a noxious and dangerous lie that he’s repeated countless times on the campaign trail—the assumption has largely been that this is just ‘Trump being Trump.’ After all, we’re used to seeing the disgraced former president make up extreme stories to sow disinformation and distract from his incompetence.

But Trump’s horrific talking point that states are “executing babies” isn’t some wild off-the-cuff claim from a habitual liar. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted message fed to Trump by a powerful anti-abortion organization that positions itself as mainstream and credible. And Abortion, Every Day has the documents to prove it.

We all know that Trump is scared of abortion. He’s watched the GOP suffer massive political hits over the issue—from ballot measures to the midterms—and is desperate to spare his presidential campaign from the same fate. That’s why for the past few months, Trump has been publicly distancing himself from anti-abortion extremism. Whether it’s claiming that abortion is a states’ issue, saying he opposes Florida’s 6-week abortion ban, or playing coy over a national abortion ban—Trump thinks that if he can feign reasonableness on the issue, maybe, just maybe, he can avoid voters’ post-Roe fury. 

What’s more, the anti-abortion movement has been playing along—feigning disappointment over Trump’s ‘betrayals,’ like the supposed watering down of the GOP platform on abortion rights. I’ve long argued that this is just a tactic: Conservatives want to make it seem as if anti-abortion groups and activists are upset with Trump in order to drive home the lie that he’s somehow softened on the issue. 

Now, documents obtained by True North Research and shared exclusively with Abortion, Every Day prove that prediction right. Far from truly distancing himself from the anti-abortion movement, Trump has been quietly taking marching orders from the country’s most powerful and radical anti-abortion activists. And despite pretending to be distressed over Trump’s abortion stance, groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA-PLA) are actually crafting near-everything that Trump says on the issue.

That includes Trump’s most malignant abortion claim: that states allow “post-birth” abortions. That’s right, the lie that states are “executing babies” isn’t just another horrific Trumpism, but a talking point carefully crafted by America’s foremost anti-abortion organization.

One of the documents provided to AED, for example, is a memo from SBA-PLA president Marjorie Dannenfelser sent to GOP candidates, lawmakers and leaders. In it, Dannenfelser directs Republicans to say that Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz support “leaving [babies] to die.” Taking particular aim at Walz—who is a strong abortion rights supporter—the memo tells GOP leaders to claim that the vice presidential candidate allowed for the murder of children as governor and repealed certain laws in an effort to cover those deaths up. 

It gets worse. Dannenfelser also encouraged Republicans to allege that Planned Parenthood doctors in Walz’s home state would “break the baby’s neck” if an abortion was unsuccessful. Just to pause on this for a moment: This is a supposedly credible group—a DC mainstay—recommending that candidates claim doctors are breaking babies’ necks.

Trump took the guidance to heart. Just a few weeks after SBA-PLA sent around their memo, Trump attacked Walz in the presidential debate:

“Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay.”

Again, what makes this so remarkable is that Trump’s ‘post-birth’ abortion lie has been largely framed as the predictable extremist ramblings of a politician who lies about everything. But this is a messaging strategy put together by arguably the country’s most powerful anti-abortion organization—an organization that has pretended to be disappointed by Trump’s abortion stance. 

This isn’t the first presidential debate where Trump parroted extreme SBA-PLA talking points. In an October 2016 debate, Trump made headlines when he claimed that Hillary Clinton’s abortion policies meant that “in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.” Once again, he hadn’t come up with this line on his own.

The talking point came from Dannenfelser, who just a few weeks earlier had drafted a letter for Trump to sign—a letter that said Clinton supported “abortion until an hour before birth.”

That letter wasn’t just messaging guidance; it marked the beginning of SBA-PLA’s outsized sway over Trump. Before Dannenfelser would agree to chair Trump’s 2016 anti-abortion coalition, she had Trump promise in writing to nominate anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, sign a national abortion ban into law, defund Planned Parenthood and make the Hyde Amendment permanent. As True North senior researcher Ansev Demirhan tells me, she “made him commit on paper to fulfilling her anti-abortion wishlist.”

For Trump, it’s paid off so far—literally. While he’s only made good on a few of his promises, the group launched a $52 million campaign to reelect him in 2020, and are spending nearly $100 million this year.

Unfortunately, SBA PLA’s influence doesn’t begin and end with Trump. You can see their impact throughout the GOP. It was Dannenfelser and her organization that spearheaded the campaign to do away with the word ‘ban,’ for example—claiming that there are no abortion bans in America, just ‘restrictions’ and ‘standards.’ That tactic was embraced by politicians and candidates across the country, and now you’d be hard pressed to find a single Republican who will use the word. (It’s also a strategy that’s been wildly successful outside of GOP circles; SBA-PLA got mainstream media outlets to stop or limit their use of the term by insisting that it was “biased.”)

What’s especially fascinating is that Dannenfelser continues to wield power and dictate how Republicans talk about abortion, even though she loses them election after election. And despite Trump’s disdain for losing, the group’s recent poor track record hasn’t stopped him from continually taking his abortion cues from SBA-PLA. In private, at least.

Publicly, both Trump and SBA-PLA understand that Americans overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans, and as such are more than happy to play-act a strained relationship for the benefit of reporters and voters. While Trump repeats the group’s nonsense talking point and pretends to distance himself, SBA-PLA feeds him exactly what to say while pretending to be oh-so-disappointed by his flip-flopping.

It’s a great deal for them both: Trump gets the massive money and support of the anti-abortion movement, and SBA-PLA uses the former president as a mouthpiece to spread wild lies while still holding on to their mainstream credibility.

The only one losing, of course, is us.