Hardcore supporters of Donald Trump are probably still fist-bumping over the way he trounced all comers in Iowa. Increasingly the GOP primary race will take on all the seriousness of a Model U.N. competition in middle school. But those of us who treasure life and liberty have some strategic thinking to do. And quick.

You see, Iowa is a stronghold of Christian conservatives. But Trump has been tacking toward the unprincipled “squish” position on abortion, closer to Nikki Haley’s stance — which isn’t “pro-life with exceptions.” It’s “pro-choice with exceptions,” those being very late term, grotesque surgical abortions that make up a tiny fraction of pre-born deaths each year. It would have been good for our cause if Trump had gotten a black eye from strongly pro-life Ron De Santis in Iowa, keeping pressure on him from the Right.

Trump Looks Like a Fireman

That didn’t happen, for many reasons. Not because Christian voters are less pro-life, but because they’re angry and scared, as they see their country taken away from them and transformed into a police state. They know that the house is on fire, and Trump looks like the fireman. He’s certainly the magnet for all the hate, intolerance and arrogance of those who think themselves our masters, while we are unruly pets.

We must make the case to Trump and his inner circle that caving in to the consensus position of elites who hate Trump and his voters is more than a crime … it’s a blunder. The opposition to Trump is fanatical and irrational. Rioters will flood the streets as we near election day. Will Trump count on the chardonnay moms who preferred Nikki Haley to get out the vote and compete with Democrat ballot harvesters? He will need steadfast people like us, as Democrat mayors let angry mobs run loose.

The Pro-Lifers in the Gulag

Trump sincerely wants to fight the Deep State and its tightening death grip on free speech and expression. He has spoken forthrightly on behalf of the election integrity protestors of January 6 sentenced to outrageous jail terms on often frivolous charges. (This while George Floyd rioters and arsonists are free to reminisce and plan for next time.) Now it’s time for Trump to be equally vociferous on behalf of pro-lifers subject to equally grotesque abuse.

As the Thomas More Society writes, its lawyers

achieved the acquittal of pro-life dad Mark Houck in January 2023. Houck was arrested in September 2022 on false FACE Act violation charges in front of his young children by heavily armed FBI agents in a dawn raid on the family’s Pennsylvania home. In a similarly horrifying scenario, which played out in October 2022, life advocate Paul Vaughn was taken into custody in front of his family. Thomas More Society is currently representing Vaughn in federal court on charges of violating the FACE Act.

In August 2023, using the FACE Act, the Biden Department of Justice jailed pro-life activist Lauren Handy, who is represented by Thomas More Society, and eight others for peacefully advocating for the preborn and protesting infanticide. Subsequent prosecutions by the Biden Administration have convicted numerous additional peaceful pro-life protesters, including two grandmothers, under the FACE Act. Each of these life advocates are facing more than ten years in prison for their peaceful opposition to abortion.

Trump must cement the support and hard work of his pro-life base by choosing a firmly pro-life running mate. He needs a vice-president he can trust, who actually backs the platform of the party he represents — not some Manchurian Candidate for the abortion industry, setting herself up as the frontrunner in 2028. Pro-lifers who smell a betrayal like that will simply … stay home, or vote third party.

The Status Quo Is Extreme

Trump might be hearing from staff that he needs to tack to the “center.” But there’s nothing “centrist” about our current abortion laws. They’re barbaric to the extreme. There are only three countries on earth with laws less protective of preborn life than ours: North Korea, China, and Pierre Trudeau’s increasingly fascist Canada. That’s right, the drug-friendly, euthanasia-happy Netherlands (like the rest of Europe) does a much better job of treating pre-born babies as human.

Nor do most Americans support our North Korean status quo. When objective opinion polls ask members of Gen Y and even Gen Z which abortions should be legal, only 9 percent of them agree with our laws as they now stand, much less the Democrats’ even more extreme proposals allowing de facto infanticide, and chemical abortion kits in high school vending machines.

Most Americans aren’t okay with the National Institutes of Health harvesting still-beating human hearts from aborted babies to craft grotesque mouse-human hybrids, to help Big Pharma make still more billions on risky, untested vaccines.

Most Americans are much more protective of unborn life than any media will report. The same media who lied about the Russia Collusion hoax and Hunter Biden’s laptop are lying about Life. We need Trump to stuff their lies right back down their throats.

We still can win, if we’re patient and disciplined.

Irresponsible, Short-Sighted Selfishness

One of our biggest states, Florida, passed a “heartbeat bill,” without provoking an exodus of women from its borders. In fact, millions of Americans are still moving there, to escape the rest of the Left’s toxic policies, which flow from the same irresponsible, short-sighted selfishness as legal abortion itself.

It’s our job to make clear the connections between chaos in the womb and bedroom and chaos in the streets. I’ve written here before that the shift of pro-life fight to the states will make it clear that pro-life states are also pro-freedom, pro-commerce, pro-family and prosperous — while abortion hubs are collapsing into crime-haunted urban hellscapes.

The same reckless hedonism and greed that fueled Hunter Biden’s binges, and threw our borders open, keeps abortion legal for nine months, for any reason, in most of our faltering country. Trump is now the candidate of every American who rejects that slow-motion suicide. He needs to speak and act like it, if he wants his voters to brave the hate and put him back in office.

Pro-lifers know that legalized abortion stains our nation as slavery once did. As Ronald Reagan wrote while still in office, protecting the innocent and helpless from our crass crimes of convenience is the greatest test of America’s conscience. Like slavery and Jim Crow, abortion marks off an entire class of people in our country as less than human. That undermines national unity, setting men against women and mothers against their very own children.

If we’re going to make America great again, we first must make it good.

Jason Jones is a film producer, author, popular podcast host, and human rights worker. He is president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.), known for its two main programs The Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement. His latest book, The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset, will be released in Spring 2024.