After suggesting he was open to a national abortion ban a mere month ago, Donald Trump is already moving the goalposts, claiming Monday that the issue should instead be left up to the states. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint. The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both,” he said in a video posted to Truth Social. “And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state. 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. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
This, of course, is a cynical attempt to convince American voters—the majority of whom believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases—that Trump won’t further decimate reproductive rights in a second term. After all, he knows extreme positions on abortion have cost Republicans elections—and could cost him a win in November. However, that doesn’t mean anyone should actually buy into his sudden about-face for a second.
Sure, antiabortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America may seem pissed, because nothing less than a promise to enact a national ban on abortion was going to please them. (“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position. Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry,” Susan B. Anthony’s president said in a statement. “The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”) But, again, their anger does nothing to belie the fact that Trump is a clear and present danger to abortion rights as we know it.
For one thing, the ex-president used his video to point out that he is “proudly the person responsible” for the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. Anyone who proudly (and regularly) brags about killing the federal right to an abortion clearly does not care about protecting a pregnant person’s right to choose. For another, Trump spouted unhinged, ridiculous lies about abortion in his announcement, like that Democrats support abortion—or, as he puts it, “execution”—“even…after birth,” saying, “That’s exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth.” (In fact, executing a baby who has already been born is murder, and anyone who claims there are people advocating for this to be legal should not be trusted…about abortion or anything else for that matter.)
It’s also essential to note that Trump doesn’t need to sign a national abortion ban to do devastating damage in a second term. As columnist Jessica Valenti writes in her newsletter “Abortion, Every Day”:
Conservatives’ abortion plan for a second Trump administration has never been reliant on a national ban, because they know they might not be able to get the votes. Instead, the focus is on using control of the FDA and the DOJ to implement backdoor bans.
By replacing the head of the FDA, a Trump administration would rescind approval of mifepristone, one of the two medications used to end a pregnancy. With the DOJ, they’d ensure that the Comstock Act, the 19th-century zombie law that makes it illegal to ship ‘obscene’ materials, would be used to stop the mailing of abortion medication or supplies. (That’s not a political prediction, by the way—it’s a plan conservatives have explicitly laid out in Project 2025.)
As Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of the Texas abortion ban and a powerful anti-choice activist, said in February, “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books.… There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
After Trump made his announcement, Biden said in a statement released by his campaign, “Donald Trump made it clear once again today that he is—more than anyone in America—the person responsible for ending Roe v. Wade. He is—more than anyone in America—responsible for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision.” The president added, “Let there be no illusion. If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law.”
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The post Trump Says Abortion Should Be Left to the States, in Cynical Attempt to Convince Voters He Won’t Help Gut Reproductive Rights in a Second Term appeared first on Vanity Fair.