Reports That Trump Blew Off Pro-Life Phone Call Overblown, But Some Worry It’s Part of a Pattern

The incident is the latest misstep on abortion for the GOP frontrunner.

By Dustin Siggins Published on April 7, 2016

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s abortion drama continued yesterday, as two leading news outlets reported he first accepted, then ignored, the chance to address top pro-life leaders.

However, the organizer of the group that was allegedly snubbed said this morning that Trump was never confirmed to address life leaders.

“Yesterday, a number of media outlets reported a story incorrectly regarding the relationship of Donald Trump to the pro-life movement, and I would like to correct the record,” said Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone in a statement Thursday morning. “Neither Mr. Trump nor anyone associated with him or his campaign canceled a meeting or phone call with pro-life leaders, nor did they break any commitment, promise, appointment, or expectation.”

Pavone’s comments push back against reports by POLITICO and The Daily Beast that Trump was scheduled to address the 115 Forum, an off-the-record alliance of pro-life leaders from across the nation. Both outlets reported that the media mogul never followed through.

One of Pavone’s colleagues, Leslie Palma-Simoncek, told The Stream that the Trump phone call to 115 participants “was never confirmed in the first place.”

The incident comes a week after Trump first backed, then retreated on punishing women who have abortions. He also said that abortion laws should remain unchanged. Hours later a Trump spokesperson insisted the candidate meant laws should remain unchanged until after the next presidential inauguration.

The incidents led to condemnation from the pro-life community, with Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List president Marjorie Dannenfelser saying in a statement that “In less than a week, Donald Trump has taken no less than five positions on abortion. As with other issues, each pronouncement Mr. Trump makes on the issue of life seemingly must be corrected by someone 15 minutes later.”

Heartbeat International president Jor-El Godsey likewise criticized Trump’s punishment comments. He told The Stream that “we need to remember that abortion always creates two victims: one dead and one wounded. Abortion is always a death sentence to one irreplaceable member of the human family, and a prison term of guilt, shame and regret for another.”

Godsey, whose group is an umbrella organization for more than 1,000 pro-life pregnancy care clinics and hundreds of pro-life maternity homes and adoption centers, said women should be provided “compassionate alternatives to abortion” rather than being left to think “abortion is her only choice.”

After the phone call with Trump failed to take place, Operation Rescue president Troy Newman told The Daily Beast that “we just don’t know exactly what [Trump] believes or who he is.”

Trump declared himself “very pro-choice” in 1999, but says he “evolved” to oppose abortion. He has signed on to a SBA List pledge to back a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation, but has said in multiple GOP debates that he would only defund the components of Planned Parenthood’s operations that consist of abortion.

Planned Parenthood committed nearly 324,000 abortions in 2014, according to its most recent annual report. That number does not include the abortifacient drugs and devices that kill unborn children prior to implantation in the mother’s womb that are provided to women each year —  frequently described as “contraceptives” by Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy groups, as well as officially by the Food & Drug Administration, which approves all legalized contraceptives and abortifacients.

Trump also suggested he could nominate his sister, who a decade ago opposed banning partial-birth abortion, to the U.S. Supreme Court — a comment he later walked back as a joke.

A spokespersons for Trump did not respond to The Stream’s request for comment about the alleged phone call no-show. LifeSiteNews U.S. Bureau Chief Ben Johnson told The Stream that the incident shows that “Mr. Trump needs to be briefed by someone intimately familiar with life issues, and soon, or risk repeating the worst week of his campaign.”

“Social issues are not going away in this campaign,” said Johnson. “Mr. Trump needs to understand the pro-life movement’s views and articulate a position that will not turn them off. If he skipped an address to a pro-life crowd — some of whom strongly supported him — it was a mistake.”

But while Trump may have his detractors in the pro-life community, Pavone compared his statements to the abortion positions of the two remaining Democratic candidates for president. “Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have also made comments recently on abortion, including in a Town Hall on Fox News with Bret Baier,” said the priest. “Sanders could name no circumstance, and Hillary hardly any, in which they thought it would be OK to make a single abortion illegal. That position is out of step with the American people. And neither of them has corrected or edited those comments.”

“As for Donald Trump, I far prefer the kind of mistake he made recently, and then corrected, regarding who should be punished, than the ongoing deliberate mistake of Clinton and Sanders who cannot seem to find an abortion they don’t like,” Pavone told POLITICO yesterday.

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