Former president Donald Trump, who has wavered between highlighting and downplaying his role in curtailing abortion rights, suggested Monday that the politically volatile issue should be left to states, after months of mixed signals about his position.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on social media, Trump took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade but rebuffed pressure to campaign on a national limit. It is \u201cnow up to the states to do the right thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy 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,\u201d Trump said in the video.<\/p>\n
Trump campaigned in 2016 on appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and became a champion of the antiabortion movement. But he has waffled on the issue since Roe fell in 2022, as Republicans up and down the ballot have paid a political price for unpopular bans. Democrats have made abortion central to their case against Trump, relentlessly reminding voters of his Supreme Court picks who helped end a nationwide right to the procedure.<\/p>\n
Trump had promised a \u201cstatement\u201d on abortion last week, as reporters pressed him for his opinion on a six-week ban poised to take effect in Florida. That set off a flurry of last-minute lobbying from abortion opponents who are divided over the best path forward. Some urged Trump to get behind a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, while others warned that such restrictions are a nonstarter in Congress and could further galvanize the left.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, he teased an imminent announcement on social media, saying that \u201cRepublicans, and all others, must follow their hearts and minds,\u201d while emphasizing that he supports exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Trump added, \u201cWe must use common sense in realizing that we have an obligation to the salvation of our Nation \u2026 to win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee began his video by affirming his support for in vitro fertilization, a process that fertilizes eggs outside the womb to help produce a pregnancy.<\/p>\n
A nationally watched court ruling in Alabama in February threatened to shut down the fertility treatment by holding that frozen embryos are people. Republican candidates largely scrambled to distance themselves from the ruling, though some in Congress have endorsed legislation that would recognize a fertilized egg as a human being entitled to legal protections under the 14th Amendment.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s emphasis on IVF support underscored the issue\u2019s potential danger to conservatives at the ballot box. He praised Alabama Republicans for quickly passing a law protecting IVF in the state and said that \u201cwe want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly highlighted the political fallout of abortion for Republicans. He has suggested on social media that GOP losses in the 2022 midterms were due to the \u201cabortion issue,\u201d which he described as \u201cpoorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump spent much of the GOP primaries declining to take a firm stance on federal legislation and even described Florida\u2019s six-week abortion ban \u2014 signed by his rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis \u2014 as a \u201cterrible mistake.\u201d During a CNN town hall last year, Trump declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban into law and insisted that overturning Roe put the antiabortion movement in a \u201cvery good negotiating position.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a September interview on NBC News\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d Trump predicted that \u201cboth sides will come together.\u201d He said the agreement could be state or federal, adding: \u201cI don\u2019t, frankly, care.\u201d<\/p>\n
More recently, he said in a March radio interview that \u201cpeople are agreeing on 15 [weeks], and I\u2019m thinking in terms of that.\u201d But he also said that \u201call the legal scholars on both sides agree: It\u2019s a state issue. It shouldn\u2019t be a federal issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet as president, he backed a national 20-week ban that could pass in Congress and at the time ran afoul of Roe. Under Roe, Americans nationwide had a right to abortion until a fetus was viable outside the womb, often pegged at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.<\/p>\n
Many antiabortion activists view federal restrictions on abortion as impractical, given the difficulty of securing the 60 Senate votes necessary to overcome a filibuster. A 15-week ban introduced by some Republicans in Congress has gone nowhere. Social conservatives planning for a second Trump term have focused on actions that federal agencies could take without Congress to make abortions harder to obtain.<\/p>\n
At the same time, some Republicans have argued that GOP candidates need to talk about abortion more explicitly to avoid ceding the issue to Democrats.<\/p>\n
When a court cleared the way last week for Florida\u2019s six-week abortion ban to take effect, Trump\u2019s campaign gave reporters a statement that made no mention of Trump\u2019s role in ending Roe. \u201cPresident Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states\u2019 rights because he supports the voters\u2019 right to make decisions for themselves,\u201d said the statement from campaign adviser Brian Hughes.<\/p>\n
Democrats rushed to remind voters of Trump\u2019s record. On social media, President Biden drew attention to Trump\u2019s past statement that \u201cwithout me, there would be no 6 weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou already made your statement, Donald,\u201d Biden wrote last week after Trump promised to address abortion further.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump, who has wavered between highlighting and downplaying his role in curtailing abortion rights, suggested Monday that the politically volatile issue should be left to states, after months of mixed signals about his position. In a video posted on social media, Trump took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}