Former President Donald Trump on Monday, June 10, 2024, in a pre-recorded message told The Danbury Institute, a group opposed to abortion, that he hopes to protect “innocent life” if elected in November. In this photo, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on Feb. 24, 2024, in National Harbor, Maryland. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump said Monday that if reelected he plans to work “side by side” with a newly formed religious organization that says abortion is the “greatest atrocity facing” the United States and should be “eradicated entirely.”
During two-minute recorded remarks played at The Danbury Institute’s inaugural Life & Liberty Forum in Indianapolis, Trump avoided using the word “abortion,” but said he hopes to protect “innocent life” if reelected in November.
“We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world,” Trump said. “But now we are, as you know, a declining nation.”
Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, said that he hopes to work alongside the institute to defend those values.
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“These are going to be your years because you’re going to make a comeback like just about no other group,” Trump said. “I know what’s happening. I know where you’re coming from and where you’re going. And I’ll be with you side by side.”
Trump also called on The Danbury Institute and church members to vote for him during the November presidential election, saying that President Joe Biden and Democrats are “against religion.”
Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a written statement released before Trump’s message was played that a second term for him “is sure to bring more extreme abortion bans with no exceptions, women punished for seeking the care they need, and doctors criminalized for providing care.”
“Women can and will stop him by reelecting President Biden and Vice President Harris this November,” Chitika wrote.
Abortion position
The Danbury Institute writes on its website that it opposes abortion from “the moment of conception, meaning that each pre-born baby would be treated with the same protection under the law as born people.”
“The intentional, pre-meditated killing of a pre-born child should be addressed with laws already in place concerning homicide,” its website states. “We also support bolstering the foster care system and encouraging Christian adoption and are working with churches around the country to help them become equipped to care for children in need of loving families.”
Another section of the Danbury Institute’s website states the organization believes, “the greatest atrocity facing our generation today is the practice of abortion — child sacrifice on the altar of self.”
“Abortion must be ended,” the website states. “We will not rest until it is eradicated entirely.”
The website doesn’t mention if the organization supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest or the woman’s life, nor does it say if women who receive abortions should be protected from criminal prosecution. The institute did not return a request from States Newsroom seeking to clarify if it supports any or all of those three exceptions.
The institute writes on its website that it “does not endorse any candidate for public office nor participate in political campaign activities. Contributions to The Danbury Institute are not used for political campaigning and are conducted in accordance with IRS regulations for nonprofit organizations.”
Florida minister takes issue with abortion letter
Tom Ascol, president of Founders Ministries in Florida, spoke on a panel discussion about the “Sanctity of Life” at Monday’s event, during which he said “abortion is the greatest evil of this nation in our day.”
Ascol also appeared frustrated with a public letter released by dozens of anti-abortion organizations in May 2022, arguing that no laws should criminalize women who have abortions. He took particular exception to the acting president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission signing his name to the document.
“It grieves me that when there was legislation before the Louisiana legislature that had a real opportunity to be passed, because there were lawmakers that were willing to go forward … that 75 pro-life organizations penned an open letter, including the leader of our Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Brent Leatherwood, who attached his name to that letter, saying, ‘We do not think that any legislature should criminalize abortion to the degree that those who offer their bodies up to be given over to abortion would be held liable,’” Ascol said during the conference.
That letter was released the same day in 2022 that state lawmakers in Louisiana were debating House Bill 813, which had been on track to criminalize women who receive abortions in addition to the doctors who provide them. Prosecutors would have been able to charge the women with murder.
Louisiana lawmakers instead opted to rework the language of the original bill to replace it with another anti-abortion measure that didn’t include criminal penalties for women who receive abortions.
Ascol said he believed the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission must say publicly if “the goal (is) the abolition of abortion. And if it is and they’re sincere, then okay, let’s work together.”
“If we can do that, I think we can have some opportunity for coalition building,” Ascol said. “If we get more of these open letters by so-called pro-life organizations helping to spike legitimate legislation, then I think we’re going to continue to see the fragmentation and understandably so.”
National Right to Life, Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life were among the organizations that signed the May 2022 letter.
Trump and abortion, contraception
Trump’s comments to The Danbury Institute on Monday didn’t clear up the confusion stemming from his comments to news organizations during the past few months.
Trump said during an interview with TIME Magazine published in April that his campaign would be releasing a policy in the weeks that followed on access to medication abortion, a two-drug regimen approved for up to 10 weeks gestation.
“Well, I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to explain,” Trump said, according to the transcript of the interview. “I’m not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I’ll be releasing it probably over the next week.”
That policy had not been released as of Monday.
Medication abortion, which include mifepristone and misoprostol, makes up about 63% of pregnancy terminations within the United States, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.
U.S. Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in a case about mifepristone’s use in late March and are expected to publish their ruling before the Fourth of July.
During an interview with a Pittsburgh TV news station in May, Trump hinted that he might be open to states limiting or banning access to contraception, though he walked back his remarks the same day in a social media post.
“We’re looking at that and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting,” Trump said on KDKA after being asked if he could support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception. “It’s another issue that’s very interesting. But you will find it very smart. I think it’s a smart decision, but we’ll be releasing it very soon.”
Trump later posted on social media that he never had and never would “ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives.”
Trump’s campaign had not released a policy on contraception as of Monday.
U.S. Senate vote on IVF set this week
Access to reproductive health care, including contraception and IVF, has become a recurring issue in the U.S. Senate ahead of November’s elections, with Democrats seeking to put GOP members on the record.
The Senate tried to pass legislation last week that would have provided protections for access to contraception, but the vast majority of the chamber’s Republicans voted against advancing that bill.
Access to contraception is currently protected by two U.S. Supreme Court cases — Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird — where the justices ruled that Americans’ privacy rights allow them to make those decisions for themselves.
Democrats and reproductive rights advocates are concerned that the justices could eventually overturn those two cases the same way the court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Senate is set to vote this week on legislation guaranteeing access to in vitro fertilization, though GOP senators are expected to block that bill as well.
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