Donald Trump likes the idea of a national ban on abortion past 16 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, the New York Times reported on Friday morning.
Trump has veered away from taking a firm stance on abortion during his presidential campaign. He has taken credit for the US supreme court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, since he appointed three of the justices who took part in that decision, but he has also suggested that Republicans who take extreme stances on abortion lose elections.
“Know what I like about 16?” Trump told one individual, according to the Times, which based its report on two people with knowledge of Trump’s thoughts. “It’s even. It’s four months.”
Trump is waiting until after the conclusion of the Republican primary to publicly discuss his position, the Times reported.
Since Roe’s demise, voters have repeatedly rejected attempts to curtail abortion rights and supported state-level ballot measures to protect the right to the procedure. Outrage over Roe is also widely credited with defeating the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and leaving Republicans with fewer victories than anticipated.
Last year, Virginia Republicans campaigned in a state election on a pledge to ban abortion past 15 weeks, as a kind of “compromise” position. Their efforts to retake control of the state legislature failed.
However, the anti-abortion movement, with its coterie of high-powered activists, has made it clear that they would like to see the procedure totally outlawed. Although most Americans consider themselves “pro-choice”, polling shows they are far less supportive of abortions past the first trimester.
After publication of the Times article, the Trump campaign sent out a statement dismissing it as “fake news”.
“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. Leavitt then celebrated Trump’s role in overturning Roe and falsely accused Democrats, among other things, of supporting abortion “after birth”, which is infanticide and already illegal in the United States.
The vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, someone may have an abortion later on in pregnancy due to a medical emergency.
More than a dozen states have enacted near-total abortion bans, several of which do not have exceptions for rape or incest. And doctors have repeatedly said that carve-outs for abortions in cases of medical emergencies have proven so vague as to be unworkable; dozens of women have now come forward to say that they were denied medically necessary abortions.
“Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared,” Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “He’s afraid that the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
