Trump backpedals on support for national ban, says states will decide abortion rights

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 Nevada, are likely to have abortion access questions on this November’s ballot, alongside the choice for president and representation in both chambers of Congress.

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.”

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.

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.

Taking credit for overturning Roe

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 Republican-appointed 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 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.”