Trump says abortion policy should be left to the states, backing away from national ban

Former President Donald Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican nominee for president, said in a video on Monday, April 8, 2024, that abortion law should be set by the states. Trump is shown speaking May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. (Chet Strange/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced a shift in his views on abortion laws Monday, releasing a video advocating for state legislatures to make those decisions, not Congress — and was immediately met with strong criticism from an influential anti-abortion group that said it should remain a national debate.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,” Trump said in a nearly five-minute video he posted to social media.

“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” he added. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or your faith.”

Trump said he supports exceptions to abortion bans to allow pregnancy terminations in cases of rape, incest and the life of the pregnant patient.

Trump’s video is a departure from comments he’s made on the campaign trail that he would support a 16-week nationwide ban.

The shift in his policy platform less than seven months before Election Day could be viewed as an effort by Trump to appeal to centrist Republicans and swing voters, especially women, as Democrats have sought to rally supporters behind reproductive rights.

In the last two years, voters in a number of states have approved ballot questions that bolstered support for abortion access, including those in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

Several other states, including Arizona and Florida, are likely to have abortion access questions on this November’s ballot, alongside the choice for president and representation in both chambers of Congress.

Abortion access is protected in Colorado state statute, and a measure that would protect abortion access in the Colorado Constitution could appear on the November ballot.

President Joe Biden wrote in a statement released by his reelection campaign that “Trump once said women must be punished for seeking reproductive health care — and he’s gotten his wish.”

“Women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to go to court to seek permission for the medical attention they need, and left to travel hundreds of miles for health care,” Biden wrote.

“Because of Donald Trump, one in three women in America already live under extreme and dangerous bans that put their lives at risk and threaten doctors with prosecution for doing their jobs,” Biden added. “And that is only going to get worse.”

‘Deeply disappointed’

Anti-abortion organizations immediately expressed frustration with Trump’s most recent campaign stance, while reproductive rights organizations questioned its truthfulness.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in a statement the organization is “deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position” and reiterated the Supreme Court’s “Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”

“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,” Dannenfelser wrote. “If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.”

South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham also broke with Trump on the issue, writing in a statement that “the pro-life movement has always been about the wellbeing of the unborn child — not geography.”

Graham, ranking member on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would continue to press for a 15-week nationwide abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant patient.

Until he can garner the votes to move that bill through Congress, Graham wrote, he would press for a law “requiring abortion providers to administer anesthesia to an unborn child at fifteen weeks.”

Trump rebuked Dannenfelser and Graham later Monday afternoon, writing on social media that they “should study the 10th Amendment and States’ Rights. When they do, they should proudly get on with helping Republicans to WIN ELECTIONS, rather than making it impossible for them to do so!”

Trump wrote in another post: “I blame myself for Lindsey Graham, because the only reason he won in the Great State of South Carolina is because I Endorsed him!”

In another post, Trump wrote: “We cannot let our Country suffer any further damage by losing Elections on an issue that should always have been decided by the States, and now will be!”

Abortion rights supporters were highly critical. Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju wrote in a statement that she didn’t believe Trump’s comments in the video, calling him a “liar.”

“He knows that publicly supporting bans loses voters, so he deployed dangerous disinformation about abortion in order to distract from the truth about what he will do if elected,” Timmaraju wrote.

“He’s responsible for the harm and chaos caused by Republicans’ abortion bans in the states, and all he is saying is that he wants more of it,” Timmaraju added. “The stakes couldn’t be higher, and we need to elect reproductive freedom majorities in Congress and send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House to restore the federal right to abortion and expand access.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, cast doubt that Trump would hold the stance for any length of time, writing in a statement, “Let’s wait a few weeks and see what his new position will be.”

​​Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a call with reporters Monday afternoon that Trump’s video shows “his support for those extreme bans and made clear he will support these bans in all 50 states.”

“Make no mistake, leaving it to the states is an endorsement of the cruel and dangerous abortion bans across the country made possible only by Donald Trump,” Rodriguez said.

The abortion bans currently in place in Republican states sometimes exclude exceptions for rape and incest, and can take effect before a woman knows she’s pregnant, Rodriguez said.

Abortion decision

Trump was president before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion it established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case and reaffirmed in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling.

The conservative justices on the court wrote in their ruling ending nationwide protections that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

That would include Congress, should lawmakers choose to pursue a nationwide law. Trump didn’t say in the video if he would veto such a bill or work to prevent it from reaching his desk, in the event he is reelected president and has a Republican-controlled Congress.

In the video, Trump personally thanked the conservative justices on the Supreme Court who ended the right to an abortion and commented that he was “proudly the person who was responsible” for that ruling.

Trump didn’t comment specifically in the video about whether he would seek to enforce an 1873 anti-obscenity law that many anti-abortion advocates say could ban the mailing of medication abortion.

The Comstock Act, as it’s called, came up at the U.S. Supreme Court in late March when the justices heard oral arguments over access to mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortions.

That law hasn’t been enforced in decades but it bars the mailing of “Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.”

Trump and IVF

Trump also addressed access to in vitro fertilization in his video, saying the Republican Party “wants to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder.”

“That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments, like IVF, in every state in America,” Trump said, later adding he “strongly supports the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.”

Trump thanked lawmakers in Alabama for enacting civil and criminal protections for IVF clinics so they could resume treatments after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos constituted children.

While many of the IVF clinics in the state restarted their work after the new law was put in place, a Mobile, Alabama, IVF clinic said it will cease at the end of the year due to a lawsuit over the process.

“Today I’m pleased that the Alabama Legislature has acted very quickly and passed legislation that preserves the availability of IVF in Alabama,” Trump said. “They really did a great and fast job.”

Trump said that the GOP “should always be on the side of the miracle of life and the side of mothers, fathers and their beautiful babies. And that’s what we are.”

“IVF is an important part of that and our great Republican Party will always be with you in your quest for the ultimate joy in life,” Trump said.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate have blocked two bills from moving forward that would have addressed access to IVF, following the questions about the process in Alabama.

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi in late February blocked efforts by Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth to pass a bill that would have implemented nationwide protections of IVF patients and health care providers.

That legislation would have barred limitations on “assisted reproductive technology services” that are “more burdensome than limitations or requirements imposed on medically comparable procedures, do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of such services and unduly restrict access to such services.”

In mid-March, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford blocked Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray from quickly passing legislation that would have expanded access to fertility treatments for military members and veterans.

The bill, titled the Veteran Families Health Services Act, would have allowed troops to freeze their eggs or sperm before shipping out to a combat zone or a hazardous duty assignment. It would also have broadened access to VA’s adoption services.

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