(OSV News) -- "Abortion has overtaken immigration to become the second most important issue for voters heading into the 2024 election," Newsweek, the global media organization, reported Oct. 21 on what its polling has found.

Four years ago -- just two weeks prior to the last U.S. presidential election -- a Pew Research poll indicated more than half of American Catholics (56%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Whether or not those attitudes have shifted during the intervening Biden administration could have a profound impact on the Nov. 5 electoral hopes of both the Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, or the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Abortion is arguably the most contentious topic facing Americans today," Natalie Dodson, policy analyst at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, told OSV News in an email. "If public opinion has changed, it's not that Americans are radically pro-abortion, but instead, that the public has been sold a lie about how the abortion industry functions," she added.

"The average American," Dodson noted, "does not support abortion up to birth, but they also do not support a complete ban, which poses a challenge for pro-life advocates who must take an incremental approach to abortion."

Despite Trump having nominated the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, his campaign website makes no specific mention of abortion among its "20 Core Promises" platform.

Nor does the campaign's Catholics for Trump webpage -- which declares "President Trump did more for Catholics than any administration in history!" -- mention the defeat of Roe v. Wade. Instead, it notes, "In 2018, Trump became the first president to address the March for Life rally and declared January 20, 2019 the National Sanctity of Human Life Day."

Early in his drive to return to the White House, Trump frequently took credit for the downfall of Roe. In a May 2023 tweet representative of that, he asserted, "After 50 years of failure … I was able to kill Roe v. Wade. … Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing."

However, as the nation's mood indicated the unpopularity of abortion bans among many -- according to a May 2024 Pew Research Center poll, 63% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases -- Trump has been less vocal about what he earlier regarded as an accomplishment.

During an Oct. 16 Fox News town hall, Trump also suggested some abortion laws are too strict.

"It's going to be redone," he said. "They're going to …you end up with a vote of the people. They're too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone because already there's a movement in those states."In the midst of the same town hall, Trump declared himself "the father of IVF" -- in vitro fertilization.

IVF treatments, which fertilize an egg outside the body in a laboratory dish, are opposed by the Catholic Church because, in addition to other ethical and moral issues, they frequently involve the destruction of human embryos.On Aug. 29, Trump announced that if he's elected, "your government will pay for -- or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for -- all costs associated with IVF treatment."

"It is not uncommon to see politicians shift at the whim of public opinion," observed Dodson, "and this is a unique election as it is the first since the overturning of Roe. But pro-lifers have faced an uphill climb since 1973. While overturning Roe was a critical step toward forming a society that better protects life at all stages, there is still much work to be done."

"To move the needle on abortion," suggested Dodson, "there must be a concerted effort to share with the public the moral concerns of abortion and its harms."

Harris' campaign website -- and the Democratic Party platform -- highlight abortion, primarily contrasting her support for access to it with the restrictions her campaign predicts Trump will enact if elected.

However, the vice president has been clear that it is a priority should she be elected.

On Oct. 26, Harris promised a Michigan campaign rally audience, "I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law."

Interviewed the same day by "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O'Donnell, Harris reflected that prior to Roe's demise, "women, in consultation, if they chose, with their priest, their pastor, their rabbi, their imam were able to make those (decisions)."

When O'Donnell asked Harris if she also supported abortion restrictions after viability, Harris replied, "I support Roe v. Wade being put back into law by Congress, and to restore the fundamental right of women to make decisions about their own body. It is that basic."In her Aug. 22 Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance speech, Harris declared Republicans to be "out of their minds" on pro-life issues -- warning that, if elected, Trump would restrict access to birth control, ban medication abortion (at least 63% of all 2023 U.S. abortions were medication abortions), and enact a nationwide abortion ban.

Trump responded he'd leave the abortion issue to the states, a position reflected by the Republican Party platform.

This November, abortion-related questions will appear on the ballot in 10 states. Initiatives in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Maryland and Colorado are intended to enshrine a right to abortion in the state constitution. Another abortion-related initiative in Nebraska aims to prohibit late term abortion, while one in New York would expand anti-discrimination laws to include reproductive health.

Harris repeated her August claims at an Oct. 30 rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as later in the day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

"He would ban abortion nationwide. He would restrict access to birth control, put IVF treatments at risk and force states to monitor women's pregnancies," she told the crowd.

Trump has said he opposes restrictions on birth control and hasn't suggested the government should monitor pregnancies.

Father Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International, urged Catholic voters to engage in the challenging work of a fully formed conscience.

"Though we are dealing, obviously, with two imperfect platforms -- and imperfect candidates that represent those platforms -- there are distinguishable differences between them," said Father Boquet, a priest of the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese in Louisiana.

"From the Catholic perspective, obviously we're looking at the human dignity; we're making sure that as we're looking at candidates and platforms, that we are seeking a candidate that's going to advance the principle for voting and defending and serving human dignity, and protecting the vulnerable and the weak," Father Boquet advised. "And as any voter should be -- whether they're Catholic or not -- to look at, how does this affect the common good? How does this affect society?"

"As a Catholic," he continued, "I have a right -- through voting -- to express those principles, and to advance those principles, and obviously to express my religious beliefs for the good of my own society and the good of my own country."

Father Boquet further clarified those principles.

"There are what the church defines as intrinsic evils, which we can never advocate for, and we can never advance. And at the same time, there are some moral issues that are not equal to those, but still are part of our prudential judgment," he added, citing immigration, human trafficking, and health care.

"That's why the bishops have been very clear in their teaching to us -- to make sure that we are not equating them, and that we are looking at those core issues that we can never advance or participate in, and," Father Boquet asked, "what can we do to mitigate them, what we can do to lessen the harm, and how can we advance the good?"

"Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," a document published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, states, "Issues that directly affect human lives -- such as abortion and euthanasia -- are fundamental and demand serious consideration."

For Helen Alvaré -- a professor in Law and Liberty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School in Arlington, Virginia, who cooperates with the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations as a speaker and delegate to U.N. conferences on women and the family -- America's abortion dialogue talks about everything except the reality of the procedure itself.

"I don't think there's reflection about this promotion of abortion -- particularly in the Harris campaign -- and what it actually says about the country, because of what abortion actually is," she said.

"Nobody put it better than John Paul II in 'Evangelium Vitae' -- which is that the next generation can be killed precisely by the people most responsible and capable of protecting them, when they are at their most vulnerable. And this," she declared, "is really the fact of each and every abortion procedure. The idea of allowing that, first of all -- let alone celebrating it as some kind of victory for women -- is really grotesque. It's grotesque and brutal."

Alvaré didn't hesitate to say so in an Oct. 11 Newsweek opinion piece.

"I wanted people to reflect on that," she told OSV News. "And I have no idea if people will. But I'm very sad that it is not being spoken more specifically in this way by pro-life interest groups and candidates."

Refusing to engage the violence of abortion, Alvaré suggested, is a telling indicator of American optimism -- or the lack of it.

"I'd love both sides of the political aisle to think about what abortion is," said Alvaré, "and what it says about some kind of despair regarding the future that we seem to be experiencing right now as Americans."

- - -Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.