On the increasingly likely assumption that it is, how would institutions on the right be affected by the president’s corrupting embrace?

It won’t be pretty for the Republican Party. It has become thoroughly braided into Trump’s bigotry. In a nation where the chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” has become a racist jeer, the GOP has accepted its rebranding as his subsidiary. To many suburban voters, the party has become a symbol of intolerance. To many younger voters, an instrument of white privilege. At the national level at least, the party’s fate is inseparable from the fate of the president.

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Most members of the conservative movement will be tainted for flipping their inspiration from Ronald Reagan to George Wallace with hardly a moment’s thought. This gives credence to charges of racial prejudice that I once thought exaggerated.

But let me focus a moment on the pro-life movement, which has traditionally been in a different category. If you believe that a fetus is a member of the human family from its first moment — and millions of Americans do — then opposition to abortion is inherently a social justice issue. It is the defense of the weak and voiceless against violence.

I realize, of course, that millions of Americans don’t believe this. And millions of other Americans would locate personhood in the later stages of a pregnancy. But since empathy requires imagination, imagine you believed what pro-life people do. By your own lights, you would be defending human rights and dignity.

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To be consistent, of course, you would need to care equally for the lives of women in crisis. And for the health and welfare of children after birth. But that is my point. Defending human dignity at every stage of human development is not a commitment currently embodied in either political party, nor in either conservatism or liberalism. People who hold this view should be against Roe v. Wade and against the separation of children from their parents at the border. They should be opposed to the dehumanization of unborn children and the dehumanization of refugees and migrants. The legitimacy of pro-life sentiment is demonstrated by its consistency.

The issue here is complicated. Trump has governed as a pro-life president, especially in the appointment of two justices to the Supreme Court who more than pass Federalist Society muster. Gratitude here is natural and understandable.

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But if the overturn or revision of Roe comes, it will almost certainly return greater flexibility to states regarding the regulation of abortion. This will kindle dozens of debates across the country and become a contest of persuasion and organization.

It is then that the Trumpification of the pro-life movement will exact a price. There is a serious cost when a movement that regards itself as pro-woman associates with misogyny. There is a serious cost when a movement that claims to be expanding the circle of social inclusion associates itself with nativism and racism. There is a serious cost when a movement that needs to be seen as charitable and reasonable associates itself with the politics of abuse and cruelty.

This turns out to be a particularly pure test of transactional, single-issue politics. Would you trade a major political gain for a large chunk of your moral reputation?

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I don’t want to argue that such a choice is easy. Maybe gaining two justices is worth it. But I am skeptical. The pro-life movement needs to be, and be seen as, advocating the defense of the weak against the strong. Trumpism is the elevation of the strong against refugees, and against migrant children, and against minorities. The gains of moral and political compromise are material; the costs are spiritual. We will see which matters more.