Donald Trump on Monday announced his belief that individual US states should decide the legality of abortion, declining to endorse a national ban on the procedure.
The former president’s stated position dashed hopes of anti-abortion groups, who want a federal ban, and drew the ire of Democrats, who blame Trump for outright bans and severe restrictions already in place across the south and midwest.
Trump’s announcement had been highly anticipated by Democrats, who believe the fight over abortion rights helps them at the polls, and Republicans, who failed to push Trump to endorse a national abortion ban during their party’s primary.
In a four-minute video post on Truth Social, Trump said it was “up to the states to do the right thing” while also touting his work to confirm the conservative supreme court justices who ultimately overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.
“States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both,” Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in the videotaped address. “Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.”
“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative than others,” he continued. “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 faith.”
“Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself,” he added.
Joe Biden seized on Trump’s announcement, saying Trump had “made it clear once again today that he is – more than anyone in America – the person responsible for ending Roe v Wade”.
“Trump is scrambling. He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe the voters will hold him accountable in 2024. Well, I have news for Donald. They will,” the president said in a statement.
In a press call, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign said abortion bans and severe restrictions are “the reality facing women in this country because Donald Trump overturned Roe v Wade”, and that Donald Trump “owns the state of abortion rights in our country”.
The campaign promised to restore federal protections for abortion up to the point of viability, or when a fetus can live outside the womb, if Biden is re-elected. Viability is generally considered at 24 weeks gestation. A full term pregnancy is 39 weeks.
“Donald Trump’s comments today are an endorsement of the nightmare we’re seeing play out in the 21 states with abortion bans,” said Kaitlyn Kash, who was denied an abortion in Texas in spite of severe abnormalities in the fetus she was carrying.
At a 13-week ultrasound, Kash found out her fetus had skeletal dysplasia, a condition that meant her child’s bones would be crushed in utero. If she gave birth, she was told, the baby would likely suffocate soon afterward.
“It is unthinkable to me that anyone could cheer on the cruel abortion bans that threaten women’s lives,” said Kash, who was forced to seek an abortion out of state. She is one of several women suing Texas.
For more than a year Trump has declined to say when in a pregnancy he would try to draw the line, even as Republican-led states have ushered in a wave of new restrictions and anti-abortion groups pressured him and other Republican presidential candidates to endorse a federal ban on the procedure.
In his statement, Trump did not say whether he would sign into law a national abortion ban if he were president and Congress passed a federal limit. Neither did he say how he, as a resident of Florida, would vote on a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into that state’s constitution.
Senior Republican senator Lindsey Graham declared his opposition to Trump’s position Monday, saying that leaving the issue entirely to the states “runs contrary to an American consensus that would limit late-term abortions”.
“I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at 15 weeks because the child is capable of feeling pain, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother,” Graham said.
In a statement on Monday, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country, said she was “deeply disappointed” in Trump’s position.
“Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry,” she said, adding that allowing states to decide the issue “cedes the national debate to the Democrats”.
Dannenfelser had previously warned that her group would not support any candidate who refused to support a national ban. On Monday, she said her group would “work tirelessly” to defeat Joe Biden in November.
Democrats, who have made abortion a central issue of the election, said Trump supported laws in the more than two dozens states that have imposed outright bans or restrictions on the procedure since Roe v Wade was overturned.
“Donald Trump is endorsing every single abortion ban in the states, including abortion bans with no exceptions,” Ammar Moussa, director of rapid response for the Biden campaign, wrote on X. “And he’s bragging about his role in creating this hellscape.”
In the video, Trump thanked the six conservative supreme court justices – three of whom he appointed as president – “for having the courage to allow this long-term, hard fought battle to finally end” by striking down Roe v Wade nearly 50 years after it was decided.
He also sought to portray Democrats as “radical” for opposing abortion access restrictions. But he simultaneously blamed Republicans for being too extreme on the issue.
Since the 2022 ruling, Democrats and pro-choice voters have won big at the ballot box, including in conservative states where abortion bans have proved unpopular. Meanwhile public polling has consistently found that a majority of Americans generally favor access to abortion.
In articulating his position, Trump said he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother”. “You must follow your heart on this issue but remember you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country,” he said.
Trump emphasized his support for in vitro fertilization (IVF), after a February court ruling in Alabama declared frozen embryos people in a decision that threatened to shut down fertility treatments in the state. The decision sparked widespread backlash and Republicans raced to distance themselves from it, even though some in Congress have supported legislation that would recognize embryos as humans entitled to legal protections. Trump praised the Republican-dominated Alabama state legislature for passing a law protecting IVF after the outcry. Reproductive medicine specialists said the law did not go far enough.
Trump has long argued that the supreme court’s decision overturning Roe gave those who oppose abortion rights “tremendous power to negotiate”.
He said he wanted to use that leverage to strike a deal that he hoped would “make both sides happy” and bring the country “together” – even though the issue is one of the most contentious in American politics, with opponents viewing abortion as a form of murder and proponents seeing it as a fundamental right.
Trump suggested last month in a radio interview that he was leaning toward supporting a national abortion ban at about 15 weeks of pregnancy – which is early in the second trimester.
“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I’m thinking in terms of that,” he said on WABC radio. “And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”
At the same time, Trump seemed reluctant to embrace a federal ban.
“Everybody agrees – you’ve heard this for years, all the legal scholars on both sides agree: it’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue,” he said.
On the campaign trail, Trump has been ambivalent on abortion. He routinely takes credit for appointing the supreme court justices who set the stage for the elimination of Roe v Wade, which he has called a “moral and unconstitutional atrocity”. He has also called himself the “most pro-life president in American history”.
But he has repeatedly dismissed as too extreme fellow Republicans who oppose exceptions to abortion in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the pregnant person is at risk. And he has said being too hard-line on the issue cost Republicans at the polls in the 2022 midterms and could do so again when he challenges Biden in November’s presidential election.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
