The Catholic News Agency article “Pro-life movement has mixed reaction after Trump’s first year of second term” (January 20, 2026) chronicles the disillusionment of activists celebrating minor regulatory victories—Planned Parenthood defunding, conscience protections, and revocation of Biden-era abortion subsidies—while lamenting Trump’s failure to restrict chemical abortions or maintain Hyde Amendment protections. The piece exemplifies how naturalistic political activism displaces the Church’s divine mission, with Joseph Meaney of the National Catholic Bioethics Center acknowledging “a widespread feeling that the second Trump administration has seemed to deprioritize issues important to the pro-life community.”
Reduction of Life Issues to Regulatory Tweaking
The article’s celebration of Medicaid reimbursement cuts and Title X grant suspensions operates within the heretical framework of treating abortion as a policy dispute rather than crimen nefandum (unspeakable crime). Pius XI’s Quas Primas condemns such naturalism by establishing that “the Church of Christ, which has been divinely instituted for the sake of souls and of eternal salvation” must govern all moral legislation. Nowhere does the analysis reference the Social Reign of Christ the King—the only solution to societal evils—instead praising Trump’s executive orders as if Caesar could sanctify what God has cursed.
When Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America complains that chemical abortion nullifies state pro-life laws, she inadvertently exposes the bankruptcy of seeking solutions through civil authorities. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 2350) mandates excommunication for abortionists and accomplices, whereas the article treats FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s alleged “slow-walking” of mifepristone studies as a bureaucratic snafu rather than evidence of structural apostasy.
Moral Bankruptcy of Political Solutionism
The report’s outrage over Trump’s IVF executive order—“The Catholic Church opposes IVF, which results in the destruction of human embryos”—ignores the deeper horror: state-sponsored eugenics through embryo selection. Pius XII’s Address to Midwives (1951) condemned artificial reproduction as “a transgression of the natural law and the divine positive law”, yet the pro-life movement’s objection remains fixated on embryonic deaths rather than the ontological rebellion against God’s creative authority.
By framing Hyde Amendment negotiations as “a very basic red line”, activists reduce the Massacre of Innocents to budgetary haggling. Compare this to the Syllabus of Errors (1864) which anathematizes the notion that “human reason… is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood” (Proposition 3). Nowhere do the quoted “pro-life leaders” demand the restoration of Canon 1397’s penal sanctions against abortionists or call for bishops to enforce Canon 915’s denial of Communion to pro-abortion politicians.
The Silent Apostasy of Accommodation
Most damning is the article’s omission of sacramental remedies. While lamenting chemical abortions, it never mentions that 92% of U.S. “Catholic” hospitals dispense contraception (National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2025 data)—a sacrilege enabled by the conciliar sect’s refusal to enforce Casti Connubii‘s (1930) condemnation of birth control. Meaney’s National Catholic Bioethics Center itself operates under the USCCB’s invalid authority, having never denounced the apostate “bishops” who permitted COVID-19 vaccine mandates using aborted fetal cell lines.
“You must remain the pro-life party or you will lose the midterms if you decide to bow to the pro-death Democrat agenda,” Pritchard said.
This threat exemplifies the movement’s Pelagian delusion: believing electoral success can thwart divine judgment upon a nation that murders 900,000 children annually. Leo XIII’s Tametsi Futura (1900) reminds us that “no merely human institution has the power to supply the place of the Church”—yet the entire article presumes the U.S. Constitution rather than the Kingship of Christ as the ultimate political framework.
The Missing Tribunal: Heaven’s Judgment on Bloodguilt
Throughout 1,200 words, the piece never references Hell, the Four Last Things, or the need for sacramental penance—a silence screaming modernism’s annihilation of the supernatural. The “pro-life movement” here mirrors the condemned errors in Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907), particularly Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” By celebrating Planned Parenthood clinic closures while ignoring the 5.3 million chemical abortions committed annually, activists embrace proportionalism condemned in Veritatis Splendor (1993).
Until these groups acknowledge that only the restoration of the Catholic monarchy and the Social Reign of Christ—not Republican majorities—can end abortion, their efforts remain what St. Augustine called “a band of robbers” (City of God IV.4) temporarily restraining evil while lacking grace to eradicate it. The article’s despairing conclusion—warning that pro-life voters might abandon Republicans—proves the bankruptcy of seeking life where death reigns institutionally.
Source:
Pro-life movement has mixed reaction after Trump’s first year of second term (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 20.01.2026