Former President Donald Trump is just fine stiff-arming conservatives over abortion.
On Monday, Trump rejected leading anti-abortion groups’ efforts to get him to endorse a nationwide abortion ban. Even one of his most notable backers, Sen. Lindsey Graham, was unable to convince Trump to back his proposal for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks except in the cases of rape, incest, or to “save the life of the mother.”
“The states’ rights only rationale today runs contrary to an American consensus that would limit late-term abortions and will age about as well as the Dred Scott decision,” Graham said in a statement, invoking the legacy of the infamous Supreme Court decision that held Black Americans could not be full citizens and inflamed tensions over slavery.
The reality, as has been clear for quite some time, is that Trump sees political peril in accepting such a position. Even during the Republican primary, Trump declined to accede to anti-abortion groups’ demands to back a ban. Trump even went so far as to blast Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his best-positioned primary foe, for signing a strict ban on most abortions after just 6 weeks into law.
“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said of the Florida law.
At the time, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion groups, said it wouldn’t support any White House hopeful who refused to back at least a 15-week ban. Some other organizations have preferred to move closer to a six-week ban.
Anti-abortion groups are staying behind Trump.
On Monday, the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said that it would work to defeat President Joe Biden.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” Dannenfelser said in a statement released by the organization.
She added, “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.
Other groups also reiterated that they would work with Trump.
“Trump made the right call – and this leaves room for better action to be taken down the road,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, wrote on X.
Hawkins applauded Trump for not backing a 15-week ban, which she has argued does not go far enough.
If elected, Trump may find other ways to nullify any tension with abortion opponents.
Some Trump allies have advocated for a potential Trump administration to claim expansive federal powers under laws such as the Comstock Act to achieve a defacto federal ban by criminalizing abortion pills and any other materials used in the administration of the procedure, as The New York Times has reported.
Anti-abortion groups have nowhere else to turn. There are few anti-abortion Democrats that remain in the party, especially at the national level. The politics have changed so dramatically that Vice President Kamala Harris recently visited an abortion clinic in Minnesota. Her stop would have been considered almost unthinkable just a few years ago.
Trump has a long and contradictory history of abortion comments.
Trump’s refusal isn’t all that surprising given his history of comments on abortion.
As a presidential candidate, Trump initially declined to say whether he had dated any women who had received an abortion. He then agreed that women who obtain abortions should get “some form of punishment,” a position so severe that even anti-abortion groups publicly condemned him. Ultimately, Trump’s alliance with conservatives and anti-abortion groups was sealed by a vow to work to confirm Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. As president, Trump’s three picks paved the way for the high court’s historic reversal.
Since then, Trump’s public and private comments have been all over the map. According to The New York Times, Trump fretted that Roe’s reversal would harm Republicans at the ballot box. (It eventually did.) While former Vice President Mike Pence was eager to claim his role in the gutting of nationwide abortion rights, Trump was at times reluctant. In a video announcing his views on Monday, the former president again bragged about his role in Roe’s demise.
The former president hasn’t answered every question
Trump’s video also did not entirely address the subject.
The former president did not explicitly say whether would sign an abortion ban. More curiously, he didn’t acknowledge the fact that, as a Florida resident, he will vote this November on whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
It remains to be seen if he’ll disclose how he’s voting.
