Former President Donald Trump‘s latest comments that states should decide on abortion as opposed to clarifying where he stands on a federal abortion ban led to swift blowback from Democrats and some anti-abortion leaders on Monday.
Abortion has become a political cudgel for Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Trump’s abortion comments were meant to clarify his muddled stance on abortion as President Joe Biden’s campaign repeatedly excoriates Trump over abortion.
But his comments instead provided fodder for Democrats to blast him once again and angered some anti-abortion members of his GOP base.
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“This 50-year battle over Roe v. Wade took it out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds, and vote of the people in each state,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social on Monday morning. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing. Like Ronald Reagan, I am strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
Trump’s stance could play well with centrist and independent voters, who are mostly likely to decide the fate of the 2024 election. He appeared to allude to that by encouraging listeners to “do what’s right for your children. Do what’s right for our country and vote.”
But it has led to at least one prominent anti-abortion group’s displeasure.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement Monday morning. “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.”
The group has long urged Trump to support a 15-week abortion limit, even doing so last week when Trump first teased the statement on abortion.
Another staunch Trump supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who championed a 15-week federal abortion restriction, publicly disagreed with Trump in a statement on Monday.
“I respectfully disagree with President Trump’s statement that abortion is a states’ rights issue. Dobbs does not require that conclusion legally and the pro-life movement has always been about the wellbeing of the unborn child — not geography,” Graham said. “I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks because the child is capable of feeling pain, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”
Although he championed the overturning of Roe, Trump did not publicly say whether he would endorse a 15- or 16-week abortion ban, which prominent anti-abortion activists had hoped he would endorse.
“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Trump said.
The Biden campaign began attacking Trump over the statement soon after Trump’s comments were released. The rapid response social media account for the Biden campaign posted a clip of Trump bragging about overturning Roe on X.
“Donald Trump made it clear once again today that he is — more than anyone in America — the person responsible for ending Roe v. Wade,” Biden said in a follow-up statement. “He is — more than anyone in America — responsible for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision.”
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg claimed Republicans “are clearly running scared, are fearful of what we’ve done and will do, and are desperate to find a way out of the political catastrophe they’ve created.”
Abortion will be on the ballot in several states as abortion-rights organizers and Democrats work to ballot measures over the matter. Florida’s Supreme Court approved an abortion ballot measure for the November election, and organizers in Arizona announced last week they had collected more than the 383,923 signatures needed to qualify for an abortion ballot measure in November.
Democrats were able to beat back dire losses during the 2022 midterm elections and the 2023 off-year elections. As Biden battles high disapproval numbers, Democrats are hoping to galvanize voters around abortion once again to aid the reelection campaign.
“Trump is scrambling. He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe, the voters will hold him accountable in 2024,” Biden continued in his statement. “Well, I have news for Donald. They will. America was built on personal freedom and liberty. So, there is nothing more un-American than having our personal freedoms taken away. And that is what Donald Trump has done.”
Ariel Hill-Davis, a Republican strategist and founder of Republican Women for Progress, told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s statement was likely the best political move to make.
“This was probably the smartest way for him to try to approach this issue,” Hill-Davis said. “Because he’s banking on voters who live in deep red states — where a state would take more restrictive approaches — he’s most likely counting those in kind of his positive electoral vote anyway, like tally.”
“And I think he’s banking on the fact that the rest of the social conservative base are not going to switch and vote for Joe Biden anyway,” Hill-Davis continued.
Despite its disappointment in Trump, SBA Pro-life was unequivocal that Trump would not lose its support. “With lives on the line, SBA Pro-Life America and the pro-life grassroots will work tirelessly to defeat President Biden and extreme congressional Democrats,” Dannenfelser said.
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“I thank the president for his statement, but I don’t expect him to do my job. I expect him to do his,” Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone said in a statement. “My job and the job of the pro-life movement is to lay out the moral absolute of the right to life, which does not admit of compromise.”
“We look forward to continuing to work together with President Trump and countless citizens to leading our nation to ever greater fidelity to its founding principle that governments are instituted precisely to preserve the unalienable right to life,” he added.