Trump’s statement shows abortion will continue to pose political challenges for Republicans — even if they continue to take a states’ rights stance on the issue. Trump has proudly taken credit for the end of the federal protection of the right to an abortion, including on Wednesday when he described the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as “an incredible achievement.” (Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped write the landmark ruling.) Yet he has also downplayed the consequences of that ruling, specifically in states such as Arizona‚ where he suggested the Democratic governor and others would address the state high court’s decision.
“Florida is probably going to change, Arizona is going to definitely change, everyone wants that to happen,” Trump said. “It was all about bringing it back to the states.”
In saying that abortion should be left up to the states in a video message Monday, and emphasizing his support for exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, Trump sought to take abortion as an electoral issue off the table for Democrats. Yet, Democrats have taken Trump’s comments as an endorsement of state abortion bans and point to Arizona as the latest example. Close Trump advisers warned him for months that taking a states’ rights position would force him to comment on each state’s abortion policies, The Post reported Tuesday. Trump pushed ahead anyway, judging that the benefit of leaving it up to the states outweighed the risk of backing a national ban that could further associate him with an issue that’s been politically damaging for Republicans.
Trump said Wednesday that he would not sign a national abortion ban. He has previously dodged questions about federal legislation and suggested he was considering a 15-week limit that some antiabortion activists have pushed for. Democrats, meanwhile, emphasized that Trump has not ruled out a federal ban.
Republicans have already faced electoral consequences following the end of Roe. Abortion rights advocates have won seven state ballot initiatives since the Supreme Court decision. And a recent Marquette Law School national poll found that 70 percent of registered voters said that abortion should be legal in “all” or “most” cases.
“Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe,” Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement.
Trump’s stance on abortion also continued to reveal the divisions within the GOP about how to handle the political aftermath of the end of Roe, an outcome conservatives pursued for nearly half a century. Some congressional Republicans have backed away from advocating for a federal ban on abortion, even if they previously supported one. Antiabortion advocates and groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, meanwhile, have criticized Trump for ceding the issue to states.
Rep. Nick LaLota, a Republican from a New York swing district, said Wednesday that he believes “everybody gets to make their own decision” on where they stand on abortion and that his views on the issue are becoming more common in the Republican Party.
“My position has been quite clear for a good couple of years, if not more now: We should be a party who is for exceptions,” LaLota said. “My position is much like 80 percent of voters who think there should be exceptions for rape, incest, life for the mother, and in the first trimester exemption. I think that is a common-sense approach that more and more Republicans are taking.”
The lack of a unified Republican message on the issue has been welcomed by Democrats.
“Republicans are all over the map in what they are saying because they realize their message is deeply unpopular,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), previously an executive at Planned Parenthood, said in an interview. “The Republicans’ argument to leave it up to the states is completely ineffective because women can see that states are going to take away their rights. It will not work for them.”
Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake said Tuesday’s state court ruling was “out of step with Arizonans,” although she had previously celebrated the end of Roe and expressed support for the 1864 territorial-era law restricting abortion in the state. Two Arizona House Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020, Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani, each said they opposed Tuesday’s court ruling, despite having supported abortion restrictions in the past. In the state legislature on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers halted Democrats’ attempts to push through legislation that would repeal the ban.
Some conservative commentators and antiabortion activists also expressed anger at Republican politicians, including Lake and Trump, over their opposition to Arizona’s near-total ban.
Steve Deace, an Iowa-based conservative talk show host, wrote on X on Tuesday that he was “extremely disappointed” by Lake’s opposition to the ruling. “In 2022, I thought Kari Lake was one of the best candidates I’ve ever seen, and said so. Now she is almost completely unrecognizable from the candidate she was then, just two years later,” he wrote. “Not sure if that means I’m still dangerously naïve or still laudably hoping for the best in people. Whichever it is, I’m tired of it.”
Republicans like Trump and Lake “are now telling us they explicitly want to let more people in Arizona kill their children,” Deace argued Wednesday, asserting that Roe “allowed Republicans by and large to lie” about their stance on abortion for decades.“This was never a pro-life party. It was just a party inhabited by pro-lifers that it was condescending to for votes.”
After Trump said abortion restrictions should be left to states, founder and president of the antiabortion organization Live Action, Lila Rose, said in a statement Monday that “Trump is not a pro-life candidate.”
“He’s far less pro-abortion than Biden, but he supports killing some preborn children and will even make that his position in an attempt to get pro-abortion votes,” said Rose, who has previously criticized Trump.
As president, Trump backed a 20-week abortion ban, but on Wednesday said: “It was always about states’ rights, and we brought it there and everybody’s very happy. With the exception of a few people, individual people that have the wrong agenda, people are very happy with my statement on abortion.”
Hannah Knowles, Emily Guskin, Scott Clement and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.