Every year, Ive listened to Republicans tell us how pro-life they are. But a couple of years ago, when they had the House and the Senate and the presidency, we didnt defund Planned Parenthood, said Lance Lohr, a resident of Lancaster County, Pa., who attended his 10th March for Life on Friday.

I go by peoples actions, he continued, and in Trump's case I believe he is pro-life because of what hes done.

Trumps top aides and religious advisers have taken great pains to portray him as a fervent abortion opponent after the 2016 cycle, when his views on the hot-button issue were anything but consistent. At the time, Trump declined to say whether any of his past romantic partners had abortions, suggested that women who have undergone the procedure should incur some form of punishment and infuriated anti-abortion groups, like the Susan B. Anthony List, when he said it wouldve been better if it were up to the states to determine the legality of abortion.

Many of those same groups that were confused by Trumps positions and reluctant to support him are now working to reelect him in 2020 not because they all believe hes had a change of heart, but because, in their view, no one has done more to dismantle abortion protections or pave the way for a test of the landmark Supreme Court legal decision in Roe v. Wade.

I dont know enough about Trump to know what his stance was prior to his presidency. Even now, I dont really care what he feels. I care what hes doing, said Nicole Burnshaw of Glen Mills, Pa., who attended this years March for Life with her nine children.

Trump used his remarks on Friday to remind the crowd of his administrations actions on abortion, an issue his reelection campaign has leaned on heavily as it looks to shore up evangelical support for the president and target other religious voters in key battleground states.

Speaking to tens of thousands of anti-abortion advocates from across the country, Trump emphasized how his administration has overseen the confirmation of 187 federal judges who apply the Constitution as written. He also highlighted his successful nominations of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two judges who were carefully vetted by anti-abortion groups prior to making it onto his list of potential nominees for the high court. And speaking about himself, Trump said unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.

From the first day in office, Ive taken a historic action to support Americas families and to protect the unborn. ... I reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, and we issued a landmark pro-life rule to govern the use of Title X taxpayer funding, he said, referring to the ultimatum his administration gave family-planning clinics last August to stop referring patients to abortion clinics or risk losing federal funding.

I notified Congress that I would veto any legislation that weakens pro-life policies or that encourages destruction of human life. At the United Nations, I made clear that global bureaucrats have no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that protect innocent life, he added.

The lines drew raucous applause and showed how many of the presidents socially conservative supporters a vital part of his electoral success in 2016, and a key coalition for his 2020 campaign are undeterred by the drama surrounding his Senate impeachment trial.

I love this impeachment. It keeps those creeps on the hill so busy that they dont pass any laws or mess with what the president is doing, said Lohr, the Lancaster County resident.

Since his January 2017 inauguration, Trump has worked to regulate and restrict abortion access using a series of rule changes that restrict the way taxpayer funds flow to foreign and domestic organizations that perform or promote abortions. Hours before his speech on Friday, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to withhold federal funding to California unless the state drops its mandate requiring private health insurers to cover abortion procedures.

Just as government shouldnt force a kosher deli to serve ham, you shouldnt require nuns to pay for abortion, and even more so because it involves the taking of a human life, Roger Severino, director of the agencys Office for Civil Rights, said on a conference call with reporters ahead of Trumps remarks. The department issued a similar notice of violation against the University of Vermont last August after concluding that a nurse was forced to participate in an abortion procedure despite repeated personal objections.

Because of his follow-through on certain abortion-related policy promises, Trump has used the issue on the 2020 campaign trail to draw aggressive distinctions between himself and the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls, nearly all of whom support codifying Roe in legislation. He spent a sizable portion of his remarks Friday going after what he called the dangerous agenda of far-left Democrats claiming that lawmakers in New York celebrated legislation allowing abortion up until delivery and repeating his dubious claim that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said he would allow for newborns to be executed after birth. (Northams comments came last year, as Virginia state legislators debated a bill that would have rolled back certain restrictions for women seeking abortions).

Together, we are the voice for the voiceless, he told the crowd, standing on a stage alongside Republican Sens. Mike Lee and James Lankford, who introduced legislation in 2015 to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

When it comes to abortion Democrats have embraced the most radical and extreme positions taken and seen in this country for years and decades and you can even say or centuries, Trump said, adding that Democrats are coming after me because of his anti-abortion agenda.

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Many of the same sentiments were featured in Trumps second State of the Union address nearly a year ago, when he railed against his political opponents for supporting legislation in New York that expanded abortion access beyond 24 weeks if there is a threat to the womans life or health, or if the pregnancy is considered nonviable. White House officials and outside allies involved with the speechwriting process at the time told POLITICO the idea to include a line about abortion originated from the president himself.

The day before the State of the Union I met with him about what was going to be in it and he had clearly been thinking about this a lot because the first thing he said was about abortion and how outrageous it was to see what happened in New York and Virginia, a person close to Trump recalled.

The speech Trump eventually delivered to Congress marked another first for the incumbent Republican, whom anti-abortion supporters now widely refer to as the most pro-life president in history. No other modern GOP president devoted a significant portion of his State of the Union to the topic of abortion. Its these milestones under the current administration that abortion opponents are expected to pay close attention to long after Trump leaves office, as they search for candidates who match his zeal and build on his anti-abortion agenda.

I remember when Reagan spoke by closed-circuit television for the first time. I thought, Wow this is great, Lohr said of the former presidents live Oval Office address to March for Life participants in 1985.

But this is even better, he added, shortly before Trump departed the White House for the National Mall.

Myah Ward contributed to this report.

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Trump sets a new GOP standard in the abortion fight - POLITICO