MAR-A-LAGO, Fla. (TND) — The Republican presidential nominee voiced his stance on abortion Monday morning.
Trump said in a video posted on TruthSocial: “My view is that we now have an abortion where everyone is seeking it from a legal standpoint. States will do so by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. Whatever they decide, it will have to be the law of the land. In this case, it’s the law of the state. “
Trump refused to endorse the abortion ban and explained why.
“Democrats or radicals are in this situation because they abort up to the ninth month and even beyond. The concept of abortion in the following months and even execution after childbirth, and that is precisely what it is all about, says the abbot. , for the baby to be executed after birth, that’s unacceptable,” Trump said.
He declined to set a timeline on when he believes abortion will be banned. He went on to describe the existing legal landscape, in which other states have other restrictions as a result of the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling that ended Roe v. Wade.
“A lot of states will be different. A lot of them will have another number of weeks or some will be more conservative than others and that’s what they’re going to be,” he said. “At the end of the day, it all depends on the will of the people. “
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had written Sunday night on his social media site that he planned to take into account “abortion and abortion rights” after dodging questions about at what point in pregnancy he thinks the limit should be set.
Republican-led states ushered in a wave of new restrictions after Roe v. Wade in 2022. For the Democrats, the fight for abortion rights is helping them in the elections and they have since exceeded expectations in the elections.
“You have to stay focused on this issue,” Trump said in his message. “But it’s not that they also have to win elections to repair our culture and, indeed, to save our country, which lately and unfortunately is a country in decline. “
Trump had long argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe gave opponents of abortion rights “enormous bargaining power. “He said he sought to use that leverage to succeed in a deal that he hoped would “make both sides happy” and bring the country closer together, though the factor is one of the most moot in U. S. politics, where warring parties view abortion as murder. And its supporters see it as a basic right of women.
Trump hinted in a radio interview last month that he favored a national ban on abortion around 15 weeks of pregnancy, or at the beginning of the second trimester.
“Now other people agree on the 15-week number. And that’s what I’m thinking about,” he told WABC radio. “And that will result in a very reasonable thing. But other people really, even the most radical ones, agree, It turns out that 15 weeks turns out to be a number that other people agree on. “
At the same time, Trump is reluctant to enact a federal ban.
“Everybody agrees, this has been heard for years, all the lawyers on both sides agree: it’s a matter of state. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue,” he said.
Trump has tried to thread the needle on abortion throughout the campaign. He takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade, which he called a “moral and unconstitutional atrocity,” and called himself “the ultimate pro-life advocate. “president in the history of the United States. “
But he has also criticized his Republican colleagues for taking too hard a line on the issue, accusing applicants of not making exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the pregnant person’s life is in danger, leading to the party’s losses in November.
“A lot of pro-life politicians don’t know how to deal with this and lose their elections. We had a lot of electoral losses because of that, because they didn’t know how to talk about it. They had no idea,” she said at the 2023 Concerned Women of America Leadership Summit.
Meanwhile, Democrats and President Joe Biden’s campaign have emphasized the factor in drawing a contrast with Trump.
Polls have consistently shown that abortion for most Americans deserves to be legal until the early stages of pregnancy. About a fraction of U. S. adults said abortions should be allowed after 15 weeks, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted last June. .
Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the vast majority of abortions between 2012 and 2021 were performed within the first thirteen weeks of pregnancy.
The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established the constitutionality of abortion up to the point of viability, around 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Late-stage abortions are rare and are carried out due to severe fetal abnormalities, when the mother’s life is in danger or when women have faced significant delays in accessing the procedure, according to fitness policy research firm KFF.
Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this report.