Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and a number of abortion advocates visited Mar-a-Lago and spoke with him by phone. By taking such a position, he would implicitly support some states that allow abortion up to birth, they told him. Conway made another argument: Trump would also implicitly support states like South Dakota, Arkansas and Florida with early pregnancy bans that he deemed too restrictive and politically problematic. If he took a position such as banning abortions after 15 weeks, she argued, he could make a compelling case against Democrats who support later abortions.
Trump listened to the arguments for nearly a year, including as recently as this weekend. And for several months, he asked his advisers about a 16-week limit, according to four people who spoke to him.
“And 16?” he said during a meeting. “I don’t like 15 years. Sixteen is four months.”
But some of his closest campaign advisers urged him to adhere to the campaign’s original position. Anti-abortion voters would stick with him anyway, they argued, and supporting a national ban would further insert themselves into an issue that has been politically damaging for Republicans. Some Republican senators have pressured him, saying such a stance could harm him and them in battleground states, according to sources close to Trump.
A year after his campaign’s statement, Trump told allies he wanted to release a video in his own words that stayed true to his original position — in part to quell questions and meetings over what he calls the “word a”, which is considered a word. bad deal for the Republicans.
“My view is that now we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine it by vote or legislation or maybe both, and whatever they decide, it must be the law of the land,” Trump said in the video released Monday. Morning.
Until the end, Trump remained procrastinating, according to his interlocutors. This left many people wondering until the last minute where he would land.
“He goes back and forth between states’ rights and the 15 weeks,” a person in contact with Trump said before his announcement.
“Trump has a special ability to keep people on their toes,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.
Trump’s idea is that anti-abortion voters will continue to give him wide latitude on the issue because of his record in office, and that supporting such a national ban would be politically damaging to the voters he needs to win, according to people familiar with calculus.
Trump complained that Republicans were hurting each other on the issue, saying it was a “bad question,” said a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. At one point, he asked a group of conservative activists who had pushed for a national ban late last year why they weren’t more grateful for what he had already done, and said they should fight at the state level.
Trump is in many ways an unlikely champion of the anti-abortion cause and even declared himself “pro-choice in every way” decades ago. But he took an opposite stance when he ran for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2016, making headlines at a town hall for declaring that if abortion was banned, women who had it would have to do so. facing “some form of punishment”.
As president, he kept his campaign promise to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and end the nation’s right to abortion. This was a landmark achievement for the anti-abortion community.
In his video Monday, Trump said he was “proud” to have ended the outbreak. Deer. But he is aware of the price Republicans have paid in elections since then. During the 2024 Republican primary, he sidestepped questions about whether or not he would sign a federal restriction on abortion, promising at times to find a limit that would somehow — albeit unlikely — – would make all parties happy. “We’re going to make a deal,” he told one activist when speaking to him about the issue.
He blamed Republican losses on abortion and questioned advisers and lawmakers about how they think abortion will affect the presidential race. race.
Privately, Trump has repeatedly complained that some Republicans don’t say up front that they support exceptions to the bans and stressed that exceptions “can’t be fine print,” according to one person. contact with him. In recent weeks, Trump has also said that too many state bans are too restrictive, the source said.
Several advisers described Trump as “thinking about a general election,” in the words of one.
He risked the wrath of influential social conservatives by calling Florida’s six-week ban “terrible.” Anti-abortion leaders were surprised in February by a New York Times article claiming that Trump liked the idea of a 16-week federal limit with exceptions, and Trump’s team – furious at the report – insisted on the fact that no decision had been made, worried about the general election. .
In a radio interview last month, Trump said that “people agree on the number 15, and that’s what I think about.” At the time, he initiated such a ban privately, but he also said that people agreed that “it was a matter of state.”
Trump’s calculation seemed largely correct: Most conservative groups and lawmakers wouldn’t criticize him.
The sharpest criticism came from former Vice President Mike Pence, who ran against Trump but dropped out of the 2024 primary before the first vote. He called it “a slap in the face to millions of pro-life Americans” and “a setback on the right to life.”
But most others argued that while Trump’s statement was disappointing, he is a better option than President Biden. Penny Nance, executive director of Concerned Women for America, said she supports federal limits on abortion but would do so. still support Trump because of his record in office.
Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, who has made support for a 15-week federal limit a litmus test for candidates to receive her group’s support, said Monday the organization was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s position. But she stopped short of calling it morally indefensible and said the pro-life base would “work tirelessly to defeat President Biden.”
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in a recent interview that while his organization is “decidedly pro-life,” it hears from many activists who recognize political obstacles to their abortion goals.
Activists say, “let’s win the election on what we can win the election on, which is the economy, borders, and lack of public safety in cities, and save the abortion debate for a later cycle.” Roberts said.
Some abortion opponents are considering ways Trump could restrict abortion access without Congress. Many focus on possible actions by federal agencies, including reviewing the approval of an abortion drug and blocking the mailing of abortion pills.
“The next administration’s action will be to reverse the Biden administration’s actions on abortion, as opposed to national pregnancy protection,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at Heritage. Foundation.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said he still thinks Trump would sign anti-abortion legislation if presented to him, and that voters should work to elect anti-abortion Republicans to Congress. “I take the president’s statement with a comma, not a period,” he said.
Graham, one of the proponents of a 15-week federal ban who had lobbied Trump on the issue, said a “justification based solely on states’ rights” would age as well as the Court’s ruling Supreme Court of 1857 in the case Dred Scott case that concluded that slaves could not claim American citizenship.
“I respectfully disagree with President Trump’s statement that abortion is a states’ rights issue. Dobbs does not legally require this conclusion, and the pro-life movement has always been focused on the well-being of the unborn child – not geography,” Graham said Monday.
Trump, who noticed that Graham is often booed when he appears with him, immediately attacked the ruby-red South Carolina senator.
“Senator Lindsey Graham is doing the Republican Party and our country a great disservice. At first he didn’t want any abortion under any circumstances, then he got up to 6 weeks, where abortion is allowed, now he has up to 15 weeks, where abortion is allowed, but what he doesn’t understand, or maybe he If he does, it’s because the radical left Democrats, who are destroying our country, will never approve of anything he or the Republicans want,” wrote Trump on Truth Social.
But Democrats have made clear they will attack Trump on abortion, regardless of the details of his 2024 agenda. They continually remind voters of his central role in Roe deerLast week, when a court cleared the way for Florida’s six-week ban to take effect, Biden highlighted Trump’s past boast that “without me, there would be no 6 weeks.”
“You’ve already made your statement, Donald,” Biden replied on social networks.
Democrats, viewing abortion as a key election issue, are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on abortion in the fall.
A person close to the former president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private deliberations, said his team was closely monitoring how the Biden campaign attacked Trump on abortion in swing states.
On Monday, Democrats jumped on Trump’s statement and claimed he supported all bans — the same argument Conway had made privately.
Biden said in a statement that Trump, “more than anyone in America,” is responsible for the “cruelty and chaos” that followed. Eggs disappearance.
Michael Scherer, Paige Winfield Cunningham and Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.
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