When Donald Trump\u2019s campaign issued a statement to The Washington Post last April saying abortion laws should be decided by states, some allies began aggressively lobbying him to change course, while others took the rare move of publicly disagreeing with him.<\/p>\n
It was a \u201cmorally indefensible position,\u201d said Marjorie Dannenfelser, who runs Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.<\/p>\n
Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and a range of antiabortion advocates went to Mar-a-Lago and talked to him by phone. By taking such a position, he would be implicitly supporting some states that allow abortions up until birth, they told him. Conway made another argument: Trump would also be implicitly backing states such as South Dakota, Arkansas and Florida with early-in-pregnancy bans he believed were too restrictive and politically problematic. If he took a position like banning abortions after 15 weeks, she argued, he could make a compelling case against Democrats for supporting later abortions.<\/p>\n
Trump listened to the arguments for almost a year, including as recently as this weekend. And for some number of months, he polled advisers about a 16-week limit, according to four people who spoke with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about 16 ?\u201d he said during one meeting. \u201cI don\u2019t like 15. Sixteen is four months.\u201d<\/p>\n
But some of his closest campaign advisers urged him to adhere to the campaign\u2019s original position. Antiabortion voters would stick with him anyway, they argued, and backing a national ban would be further inserting himself into an issue that has been politically damaging for Republicans. Some Republican senators lobbied him that such a position could hurt both him and them in battleground states, according to people close to Trump.<\/p>\n
One year after his campaign\u2019s statement, Trump told allies he wanted to release a video in his own words that would stick to his original position \u2014 partially to quell the questions and meetings about what he calls the \u201ca-word,\u201d which ranks as a bad issue for Republicans.<\/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,\u201d Trump said in the video released Monday morning.<\/p>\n
Until the end, Trump had waffled, according to people who spoke with him. That left many guessing until the last minute about where he would land.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe goes back and forth between states\u2019 rights and 15 weeks,\u201d one person in touch with Trump said ahead of his announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump has the special ability to keep people on their toes,\u201d said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s thought is that antiabortion voters will continue to give him wide latitude on the issue because of his record in office, and that supporting such a national ban would be politically harmful with the voters he needs to win, according to people familiar with the calculation.<\/p>\n
Trump has complained that Republicans have hurt themselves on the issue, saying it is a \u201cbad issue,\u201d said one person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. At one point, he asked a group of conservative activists pushing him on a national ban late last year why they were not more thankful for what he had already done, and said they should fight at the state level.<\/p>\n
Trump is in many ways an unlikely champion for the antiabortion cause and decades ago even declared himself \u201cpro-choice in every respect.\u201d But he took an opposite stance as he sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, making headlines at a town hall for saying that if abortion was outlawed, women who get them should face \u201csome form of punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
As president, he delivered on his campaign promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the nationwide right to an abortion. It was a seminal accomplishment for the antiabortion community.<\/p>\n
In his video on Monday, Trump said he was \u201cproudly\u201d responsible for ending Roe. But he is cognizant of the price Republicans have paid at the polls ever since. During the 2024 GOP primary, he sidestepped questions about whether he would sign a federal abortion restriction into law, sometimes promising to find a limit that would somehow \u2014 albeit improbably \u2014 make all sides happy. \u201cWe\u2019ll make a deal,\u201d he told one activist talking to him about the issue.<\/p>\n
He has attributed Republican losses to abortion and has quizzed advisers and lawmakers about how they think abortion will affect the presidential race.<\/p>\n
In private, Trump has repeatedly complained that some Republicans don\u2019t say at the outset that they support exceptions to bans and has emphasized that exceptions \u201ccan\u2019t be the small print,\u201d according to a person in touch with him. In recent weeks Trump has also commented that too many state bans are too restrictive, the person said.<\/p>\n
Several advisers described Trump as \u201cthinking about a general election,\u201d in the words of one.<\/p>\n
He risked the ire of influential social conservatives by calling Florida\u2019s six-week ban \u201cterrible.\u201d Antiabortion leaders were taken aback in February by a New York Times report saying Trump liked the idea of a 16-week federal limit with exceptions, and Trump\u2019s team \u2014 furious about the reporting \u2014 insisted that no decision had been made, worried about the general election.<\/p>\n
In a radio interview last month, Trump said \u201cpeople are agreeing on 15, and I\u2019m thinking in terms of that.\u201d At the time, he floated such a ban privately, but he also said people agreed that \u201cit\u2019s a state issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s calculation appeared to be largely correct that most conservative groups and lawmakers would not criticize him.<\/p>\n
The sharpest criticism came from former vice president Mike Pence, who ran against Trump but dropped out of the 2024 primary before the first vote was cast. He called it a \u201cslap in the face to millions of pro-life Americans\u201d and a \u201cretreat on the right to life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But most others argued that even if Trump\u2019s statement was disappointing, he is a better option than President Biden. Penny Nance, chief executive of Concerned Women for America, said she favors federal limits on abortion, but she will still support Trump because of his record in office.<\/p>\n
Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, who has made supporting a 15-week federal limit a litmus test for candidates to receive her group\u2019s endorsement, said Monday that the organization was \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d in Trump\u2019s position. But she did not call it morally indefensible and said the pro-life grass roots would \u201cwork tirelessly to defeat President Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in a recent interview that although his organization is \u201cunabashedly pro-life,\u201d it hears from many activists who recognize the political barriers to their goals on abortion.<\/p>\n
The activists say, \u201clet\u2019s go win the election on what we can win the election on, which is the economy, the border and the lack of public safety in cities, and save the abortion conversation for a later cycle,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n
Some abortion opponents are planning for ways Trump could curtail abortion access without Congress. Many are focused on possible actions by federal agencies, including revisiting the approval of an abortion drug and blocking the mailing of abortion pills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe action in the next administration is going to revolve around undoing the Biden administration\u2019s actions on abortion as opposed to a national gestation protection,\u201d said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said he still thought Trump would sign antiabortion legislation if presented to him, and that voters should work to elect antiabortion Republicans in Congress. \u201cI take the president\u2019s statement with a comma, not a period,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Graham, a sponsor of a 15-week federal ban who had lobbied Trump on the issue, said a \u201cstates\u2019 rights-only rationale\u201d would age as well as the Supreme Court\u2019s 1857 ruling in the Dred Scott case that concluded that enslaved people could not claim U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI respectfully disagree with President Trump\u2019s statement that abortion is a states\u2019 rights issue. Dobbs does not require that conclusion legally, and the pro-life movement has always been about the well-being of the unborn child \u2014 not geography,\u201d Graham said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has noted that Graham is often booed when he appears with him, immediately attacked the senator from ruby-red South Carolina.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenator Lindsey Graham is doing a great disservice to the Republican Party, and to our Country. At first he wanted no Abortions under any circumstances, then he was up to 6 weeks, where you\u2019re allowed Abortion, now he\u2019s up to 15 weeks, where you\u2019re allowed Abortion, but what he doesn\u2019t understand, or perhaps he does, is the Radical Left Democrats, who are destroying our Country, will never approve anything that he or the Republicans want,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
But Democrats have made clear they will attack Trump over abortion no matter the specifics of his 2024 platform. They are reminding voters nonstop about his pivotal role in Roe\u2019s end in 2022. When a court cleared the way last week for Florida\u2019s six-week ban to take effect, Biden highlighted Trump\u2019s past boast that \u201cwithout me, there would be no 6 weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou already made your statement, Donald,\u201d Biden responded on social media.<\/p>\n
Democrats, viewing abortion as a key election issue, are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on abortion in the fall. <\/p>\n
One person close to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations said his team is closely monitoring how the Biden campaign was attacking Trump on abortion in swing states.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Democrats jumped on Trump\u2019s statement and argued he was backing all the bans \u2014 the same argument Conway had made privately.<\/p>\n
Biden said in a statement that Trump, \u201cmore than anyone in America,\u201d is responsible for \u201cthe cruelty and the chaos\u201d that have followed Roe\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n
Michael Scherer, Paige Winfield Cunningham and Michelle Boorstein contributed this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When Donald Trump\u2019s campaign issued a statement to The Washington Post last April saying abortion laws should be decided by states, some allies began aggressively lobbying him to change course, while others took the rare move of publicly disagreeing with him. It was a \u201cmorally indefensible position,\u201d said Marjorie Dannenfelser, who runs Susan B. Anthony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2920","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\/2920","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=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}