NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {I} n an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday, Donald Trump attacked Governor Ron DeSantis’s approval of a law in Florida that protects the lives of babies with detectable heartbeats as “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”
With those words, Trump has staked out a position in favor of state laws that allow the purely elective destruction of unborn children until some point far later than six weeks into pregnancy, when only a small percentage of all abortions are performed.
It is important to note that Florida’s law prohibiting elective abortions after six weeks contains almost every conceivable exception, so a lack of exceptions cannot possibly be the reason Trump is attacking Florida’s law. The Heartbeat Protection Act protects the life and physical health of the mother throughout pregnancy; it contains an exception in the case of rape, incest, or human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy; and it contains an exception for children with fatal abnormalities until the start of the third trimester of pregnancy.
How long does Trump think state laws should allow the killing of unborn babies for any reason? Fifteen weeks? Six months? He refused to say. “It could be state, or it could be federal,” Trump said. “I don’t, frankly, care.”
Although Florida’s law allows elective abortions in the first six weeks of pregnancy, it has been one of the most important pro-life victories in the country for a couple of reasons. First, because Florida is the third-largest state in the country, there are simply many more lives to be protected and saved there than in many small red states combined. Second, Florida is a purple state, and the Heartbeat Protection Act was an example of bold leadership that pushed the bounds of what is politically possible.
In 2022, Georgia governor Brian Kemp cruised to reelection by eight points — in a state Trump lost in 2020 — after signing into law a heartbeat act that was in effect on Election Day. But unlike Georgia, Florida allows constitutional amendments to be enacted via referendum if 60 percent of Florida voters support them. In 2024, a sweeping pro-abortion amendment will almost certainly be on the ballot in Florida, and the battle will be a close-run thing.
When the voters of Michigan were given the choice between the state’s pre-Roe law, which contained an exception only for the life of the mother, and a sweeping pro-abortion constitutional amendment, the amendment passed with 56.7 percent of the vote. Trump’s attack on Florida’s heartbeat law could put the state’s pro-abortion amendment over the top, and the consequences of its passage would be deadly.
Even if the pro-abortion measure fails to get 60 percent in Florida, Trump is doing real and deadly damage to the pro-life cause. Many partisans derive their positions from whatever their political leaders say, and this has been especially true of the cult of personality that has been built up around Trump.
The examples of Kemp in Georgia, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, and Mike DeWine in Ohio demonstrate that Republican candidates can support heartbeat laws at the state level without paying a political price. Trump is attacking Florida’s law simply because he wants to attack Ron DeSantis, who is trailing him by a whopping 44 points in the national primary polls — not because he needs to campaign against the law to win in November 2024.