In a rambling video statement posted to Truth Social on Monday, Donald Trump claimed that if he is reelected, abortion “will” be left to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said. “Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will [be] more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
Trump’s statement is notable in part for what he left out. By declining to support a federal, week-specific ban on abortion, he angered Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life, a powerful anti-abortion group. “We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” she said. “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.”
Other abortion opponents struck a more conciliatory tone. In a thread posted to X, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life praised Trump for calling children and family “the ultimate joy in life” and added:
I'm pleased to see that President Trump listened to pro-lifers and isn't going to allow a divisive late-term limit that some GOP insiders were been pushing, which would have embraced more than 9 in 10 abortions, to be a distraction from Joe Biden's abortion extremism.
Hawkins is a good foot soldier (and Dannenfelser will likely fall in line). She has every reason to be: Trump may not be a true believer, but he’s a fundamentally transactional politician. Abortion opponents backed him in 2016, and he responded by appointing the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Since then, Trump has surrounded himself with aides who are anti-abortion extremists. Many believe the mostly dormant Comstock Act already bans abortion in the absence of new federal restrictions and hope to revive the archaic 19th-century obscenity law if he wins a second term. “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan F. Mitchell, an attorney who has represented Trump, told the New York Times in February. Trump, then, doesn’t have to endorse a federal ban; his administration could try to restrict abortion in other ways.
That may be why his statement leaves several vital questions unanswered:
Things Trump doesn't say in the abortion statement:
1) Whether he'd veto an abortion ban
2) How Trump regulators would treat e.g. mifepristone.
3) How he'll vote on the Florida abortion referendum.
With Monday’s video, Trump is trying to manipulate his image. It may not work. Though he hopes to appear moderate by declining to support a federal ban, he took credit for overturning Roe — as he has done repeatedly in the past. He thus runs afoul of public opinion and links himself inextricably to the most stringent abortion restrictions that have come into force because of Dobbs. Ron DeSantis is the one who signed Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law, but Trump owns it, too, and he can’t escape what he has unleashed. The only thing he can do instead is lie and obfuscate.
Former Trump officials like Roger Severino are promising a Trump DOJ would enforce the Comstock Act as a ban. These pledges (and Trump's silence on the q) are enough to placate antiabortion voters/ leaders while the campaign officially appears to "break" with the movement. https://t.co/Ovzyn3wTAl
Abortion opponents do this too. As the New York Times reported, they will sometimes refer to the Comstock Act by its statute number, 18 U.S.C. 1461 and 1462. “Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute,” reads a policy plan that is part of Project 2025, an ambitious — and deeply conservative — agenda drawn up by a coalition of right-wing groups for Trump’s second term. It adds, “The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.” Mitchell told the Times he hoped Trump knew nothing of the Comstock Act “because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth.” Indeed, Trump didn’t mention the law on Monday, but that doesn’t mean he, or at least his aides, aren’t thinking about it, and planning for the future.
Though Trump did not endorse a federal abortion ban on Monday, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t sign one should it cross his desk as president. (Declining to support such a ban is not the same thing as promising not to sign one.) He may lack deep convictions beyond his personal superiority to everyone else, but he knows who made him president. He’ll do what his closest allies want him to do, regardless of what he says right now. We’ve had four years of Trump. We know who he is. His allegiance is not to the will of the people or to the women who must contend with abortion bans. It’s to himself and to his own power. Monday’s statement was calculated to win votes while appeasing his base. And he knows there’s no way to accomplish the latter without giving into them. Abortion opponents won’t tolerate blue-state havens for the procedure. They’ll try to ban it everywhere, as quickly as they can — with Trump at the helm.
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Why Would Anyone Trust Trump on Abortion?
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09.04.2024
In a rambling video statement posted to Truth Social on Monday, Donald Trump claimed that if he is reelected, abortion “will” be left to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said. “Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will [be] more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
Trump’s statement is notable in part for what he left out. By declining to support a federal, week-specific ban on abortion, he angered Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life, a powerful anti-abortion group. “We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” she said. “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.”
Other abortion opponents struck a more conciliatory tone. In a thread posted to X, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life praised Trump for calling children and family “the ultimate joy in life” and added:
I'm pleased to see that President Trump listened to pro-lifers and isn't going to allow a divisive late-term limit that some GOP insiders were been pushing, which........
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