One of President Trump’s evangelical advisers says America’s evangelical Christians are more confident than ever that the landmark abortion case Roe V. Wade could be overturned under Trump’s presidency.
Johnnie Moore, a Southern Baptist minister and CEO of The Kairos Company who was a co-chairman of Trump’s evangelical advisory board during his campaign, told The Associated Press in an interview that despite Trump’s public cautioning that he won’t ask potential nominees to the Supreme Court about their stance on abortion, evangelicals remain highly confident in Trump’s eventual pick to fill the recent vacancy.
{mosads}
“The left is going to try very hard to say this is all about overturning Roe,” Moore told the AP, before adding: “There is a high level of confidence within the community that overturning Roe is actually, finally possible.”
“Evangelicals have never been more confident in the future of America than they are now. It’s just a fact,” he said.
Other evangelical advisers to Trump’s administration and campaign said sweeping changes to abortion law would not be as easy as a change at the Supreme Court level. Prominent supporter Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. told the AP that most states would likely keep abortion legal even if the ruling were reversed.
“What people don’t understand is that if you overturn Roe v. Wade, all that does is give the states the right to decide whether abortion is legal or illegal,” Falwell said. “My guess is that there’d probably be less than 20 states that would make abortion illegal if given that right.”
“In the ’70s, I don’t know how many states had abortion illegal before Roe v. Wade, but it won’t be near as many this time,” he added.
Trump said in an interview set to air Sunday with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo that his potential nominee’s stance on Roe V. Wade while not be the biggest factor in his decision on nominating a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his resignation this week.
“That’s a big one, and probably not,” the president told Fox, according to an excerpt tweeted by producer Fin Gomez. “They’re all saying, ‘don’t do that, you shouldn’t do that,’ but I’m putting conservative people on and I’m very proud of Neil Gorsuch who has been outstanding. His opinions are so well-written and so brilliant.”
Sixty-seven percent of Americans said they don’t want the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Rose v. Wade decision, while 29 percent said they do, according to a survey this week from the Kaiser Family Foundation.