Former President Donald Trump says he will finally announce Monday when he believes abortions should be banned, after months of refusing to stake a position on an issue that could decide the outcome of November\u2019s presidential election. The presumptive Republican nominee wrote on his social media site Sunday night that he plans to issue a statement on \u201cabortion and abortion rights.\u201d He told reporters last week he would make a statement soon after being asked about Florida\u2019s six-week abortion ban going into effect.<\/p>\n
Trump for more than a year now has declined to say when in a pregnancy he would try to draw the line, even as Republican-led states have ushered in a wave of new restrictions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. His announcement will be closely watched both by Democrats who believe the fight over abortion rights helps them at the polls and Republicans who failed to push Trump to endorse a national abortion ban during the GOP primary.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat love and compassion must be shown when even thinking about the subject of LIFE,\u201d Trump wrote on his social media site, \u201cbut at the same time we must use common sense in realising that we have an obligation to the salvation of our Nation, which is currently in serious DECLINE, TO WIN ELECTIONS, without which we will have nothing other than failure, death, and destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump had long argued that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision overturning Roe gave those who oppose abortion rights \u201ctremendous power to negotiate.\u201d He said he wanted to use that leverage to strike a deal that he hoped would \u201cmake both sides happy\u201d and bring the country \u201ctogether\u201d \u2013 even though the issue is one of the most contentious in American politics, with opponents viewing abortion as murder and proponents seeing it as a fundamental women\u2019s right.<\/p>\n
Trump suggested last month in a radio interview that he was leaning toward supporting a national abortion ban at around 15 weeks of pregnancy \u2013 early in the second trimester. \u201cThe number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I\u2019m thinking in terms of that,\u201d he said on WABC radio. \u201cAnd it\u2019ll come out to something that\u2019s very reasonable. But people are really, even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, Trump seemed reluctant to embrace a federal ban. \u201cEverybody agrees \u2013 you\u2019ve heard this for years \u2013 all the legal scholars on both sides agree: It\u2019s a state issue. It shouldn\u2019t be a federal issue, it\u2019s a state issue,\u201d he said. Trump has tried to thread the needle on abortion throughout the campaign. He routinely takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, which he has called a \u201cmoral and unconstitutional atrocity,\u201d and has called himself the \u201cmost pro-life president in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he has also repeatedly criticized fellow Republicans for being too hard-line on the issue, blaming candidates who did not allow for exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the pregnant person is at risk for the party\u2019s losses that November. \u201cA lot of politicians who are pro-life do not know how to discuss this topic and they lose their election. We had a lot of election losses because of this, because they didn\u2019t know to discuss it. They had no idea,\u201d he said at the Concerned Women of America 2023 Leadership Summit.<\/p>\n
Democrats and President Joe Biden\u2019s campaign, meanwhile, have been spotlighting the issue as they work to draw a contrast with Trump. Polling has consistently shown that most Americans believe abortion should be legal through the initial stages of pregnancy. About half of US adults said abortions should be permitted at the 15-week mark, according to an Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll conducted last June.<\/p>\n
Data compiled by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention show that the vast majority of abortions from 2012 to 2021 were performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court\u2019s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established the constitutional right to abortion until the time of viability, at around 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are rare and are often performed due to serious fetal abnormalities, when the life of the mother is at risk, or when women have faced significant delays accessing the procedure, according to the health policy research firm KFF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former President Donald Trump says he will finally announce Monday when he believes abortions should be banned, after months of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":38860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[297,893,10109,12582,168,12585,12587,12588,3028,12589,9021,110,12586,12584,3530,350,12583,12590],"class_list":["post-38859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-abortion","tag-ban","tag-conservatives","tag-divisiveness","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-outcome","tag-federal-issue","tag-hard-line-republicans","tag-politics","tag-pro-life","tag-rights","tag-roe-v-wade","tag-state-issue","tag-state-wise-restrictions-on-abortion","tag-us-2024-presidential-elections","tag-us-supreme-court","tag-views","tag-weeks-of-pregnancy"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}