Boston mayor Marty Walsh is a leading voice against President Donald Trump's so-called "Muslim ban," which is neither a ban or targeted against Muslims because of their faith.  He is also a critic of Trump's effort to yank federal funding from cities that defy federal law by protecting illegal aliens.

Like hundreds of other cities, Boston is a sanctuary city that has dared federal officials to deny it federal funding even as it helps people break laws.  Like its brethren, Boston has received tremendous media and political support for its defiance of federal law.

It's time for states to follow the example of Boston, San Francisco, and the rest.  With Trump advocating for life and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the time is ripe for pro-life governors and legislators to stop treating pro-abortion laws and judicial decisions with any respect.

Over the last 44 years, pro-life advocates have hamstrung themselves by playing the rules of polite politics.  Incrementalism has its place, but Ohio Right to Life and self-declared "pro-life" Ohio governor John Kasich stopped a bill banning abortions when a heartbeat can be detected.  Kasich's reason was that courts would stop the bill.

The abortion industry is clear on its goals – taxpayer-funded slaughter of the unborn for all who want it – and the Democratic Party has jumped on the bandwagon.  Meanwhile, pro-life Republicans get caught up in claiming that the Hyde Amendment bans federal funding for abortions (it does not), and then getting defensive when the press and politicians in both parties attack not subsidizing a woman's choice as extreme.

The hamstringing is perhaps most seen in how the pro-life movement cheered a recent report that abortions have gone down in the country.  The report failed to address contraceptives that double as abortion-inducing drugs and devices.  This means that the public has been given the false impression that because surgical and medical abortions have gone down, the millions of babies killed by abortifacients don't count.

Likewise, the pro-life movement has said it wants to shift federal funding of Planned Parenthood to federally qualified health centers because they don't commit abortions.  However, they do provide contraceptives – meaning that the pro-life movement is mindlessly shifting funds from one type of abortion to another, rather than insisting that abortion funds be sent to pro-life pregnancy resource centers that provide only life-affirming options for vulnerable women.

The debate is hamstrung in other ways.  The Associated Press insists on calling "pro-life" "anti-abortion," providing a negative connotation to people trying to save lives.  Meanwhile, those who support slaughtering the unborn are given the euphemism "pro-choice," meaning that it is a moral positive for an abortionist to help a woman deny a child a choice.

Many pro-life advocates fall into this rhetorical trap, calling opponents "pro-choice," whereas the abortion industry regularly uses negative terms – "anti-choice," "against women's rights," "against reproductive choice." 

Pro-life elected officials don't have to start getting tough by rejecting Roe v. Wade if that's too big a step.  They can start by ignoring last year's decision by five of eight U.S. Supreme Court justices who claimed that Texas can't enforce modest regulations that increase costs for abortion centers.  This provided too much of a burden on women's access to abortion, they decided – and Texas bowed right down to the robed rulers.

Likewise, they can ignore President Obama's rule that makes it nearly impossible for states to defund Planned Parenthood.  Just as so-called "DREAMers" relied on Obama to protect them, governors and legislators should demand that Trump protect innocents in the womb.

Moral opposition to the new president's refugee measures has been led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Their stance empowered a liberal "Catholic" group to hold a Mass to protect Trump's refugee executive order.  This group, which has never protested abortion so vociferously, argued that the executive order violated Scripture's call to accept the stranger in our midst.

Yet this hypocritical stance from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good fails when it comes to both history and Sacred Tradition.  According to every pope in history, including the current pontiff, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, abortion is the ultimate crime against humanity.  These same authorities have taught that nations have the right to protect their own borders and provide for national security even as they welcome the stranger.

According to sanctuary city advocates, including the Catholic bishops, illegal immigrants are the poor and downtrodden who need protecting.  Who is more downtrodden than the unborn slaughtered in the womb for profit?  Who is poorer of mind, body, soul, and frequently income than a woman who hires someone to kill her child – or the man who either abandons the mother to such a fate or directly involves himself in the child's destruction?

To their credit, the bishops have always stood against abortion.  But even they compromised their moral authority by defending the abortion-funding Hyde Amendment as a prudential compromise in the Affordable Care Act – a compromise that was soon abandoned by the Obama administration.

Immigration is a prudential issue, regarding which many may reasonably disagree about the best policy for any specific nation's set of circumstances.  Abortion is none of the above – it is always wrong to target innocents in the womb.  Many sanctuary city advocates simultaneously believe we shouldn't arrest those who choose to break our laws but that the death penalty should be enforced for innocents who inhabit the womb.

It's time for pro-lifers to take the tactics of sanctuary cities and apply them to the states.  Right now we have leeway with President Trump, Vice President Pence, and a Republican Congress.  What better time to test the legal waters?