Former President Donald J. Trump likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions: in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother's life, according to two people directly involved. He reportedly told his advisers and allies. Knowledge of Trump's deliberations.
Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in mid-2022, emboldening Democrats ahead of that year's midterm elections, Trump has carefully avoided taking a clear position on abortion restrictions. He has privately stated that he wants to wait to publicly discuss his views until after the Republican presidential primary because he does not want to risk alienating social conservatives before securing his nomination. , two people involved said.
Trump has taken a transactional approach to abortion since becoming a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect the same approach.
One thing Trump likes about the federal 16-week abortion ban is that it's a rough number. “You know what I like about 16-year-olds?” Trump told one of these people on condition of anonymity about a private conversation. “It's even. It's been 4 months.”
When discussing his running mate, Trump often asks, “Is abortion okay?” When he hears that Republicans don't support the “three exceptions,” he immediately turns negative. He told his advisers that Republicans would continue to lose elections with this attitude.
When the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Trump told advisers he believed the decision would be harmful to the Republican Party. Since then, he has formed the view that the abortion issue is overwhelmingly responsible for the Republican Party's string of defeats in Congressional elections.
And he is keenly aware of his own weakness. It was he who appointed the three judges who made that decision possible, a fact he has publicly claimed credit for on several occasions. Those statements are already appearing in ads, and Democrats plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remind voters of that fact.
By supporting the 16-week ban, Trump is seeking to satisfy both social conservatives who want further restrictions on abortion access and Republicans and independent voters who want looser restrictions on abortion procedures. Dew.
Currently, 20 states, including Trump's home state of Florida, ban abortions at various stages of pregnancy before 16 weeks. The type of ban Mr. Trump has privately discussed would restrict abortion rights in the remaining 30 states, where it would be legal after that point. There is also room for debate regarding the issue of exceptions limited to the life of the mother. A state court in Texas has ruled that a woman cannot be denied protection for a “life-threatening condition” related to her pregnancy, even if the fetus has a serious diagnosis and the woman's future fertility and health are at risk. The court ruled that the limited exception did not apply.
In a statement, Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt, did not address Trump's personal comments.
“As President Trump has said, he will sit down with both sides and negotiate an agreement that everyone is happy with,” Ms. Levitt said, adding that “the powerful constitutionalist federal judge who overturned Roe v. Wade and appointed Supreme Court justices,” he added. And other countries have tried to do so for more than 50 years, sending the decision back to the states. ” She attacked President Biden and Congressional Democrats for being overly permissive of abortion.
Trump has said he supported abortion rights for most of his adult life, but in early 2011, when he was considering running for president in the Republican primaries, he announced that he now opposes abortion. It was announced that there is.
But Trump never felt comfortable discussing it. In an interview with TV host Chris Matthews in early 2016, Trump said there needed to be “some kind of punishment” for women who had illegal abortions, but the Trump campaign quickly retracted the comment. did.
At the time, Trump needed to persuade skeptical social conservatives to implement anti-abortion policies and elect socially conservative judges, and to aid in his persuasion efforts, ultra-conservative Mike Pence was hired. was elected vice president.
Mr. Trump has since done just that, building his own strong connections with evangelical voters and feeling less of a need to pander to them. After Roe was overturned, Republicans are struggling to find a way to talk about abortion now that they can no longer simply say they oppose it. The concept of some kind of national ban has gained traction, with a 15-week federal abortion ban emerging as the standard many anti-abortion activists have set for Republican candidates.
A 16-week ban will not eliminate many abortions. Nearly 94 percent of abortions occur before 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control. Also, such bans are not based on medical research. It takes 15 weeks during pregnancy to get to the point where important tests are done to check the fetus for a rare but potentially fatal disease. In fact, based on polling, some Republicans believe this is the most politically desirable position for voters.
An AP/NORC poll released in July 2023, a year after Roe was overturned, showed support for a ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy by a narrow margin. The poll found that a majority of Democrats supported such a measure, and a majority of Republicans opposed it. The poll found that a six-week ban was unpopular with most Americans, including Republicans, and a majority of Americans did not support allowing abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Mr. Trump's allies, introduced a bill in 2022 calling for a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother after the abortion period ends.
Trump never supported the bill, saying last fall that it should be left to individual states, although other prominent Republicans have distanced themselves from it. Prominent anti-abortion groups criticized him for his comments, but their leaders were pacified after meeting with Trump and Graham.
There are indications that embracing a national ban of any kind would be unpopular with a broad swath of independent voters and potentially risky for Mr. Trump. In Virginia, for example, Gov. Glenn Youngkin's effort to rally voters around what his campaign called a “15-week limit” failed last November, and Democrats outperformed expectations in state elections.
In this Republican nomination race, primary voters typically reward candidates who oppose abortion rights, but Trump has so far avoided answering questions about whether he supports a nationwide ban. There is. Instead, he talks about abortion as if it were a real estate transaction. He credits it with giving anti-abortion activists “great bargaining power.”
“It's going to take weeks and months to see what happens,” Trump said in an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press” in September. “You'll come up with numbers that will make people happy.”
At a Fox News town hall event in January, a week before the Iowa caucuses, social conservative voters told Trump he would “uncompromisingly protect everyone's right to life” and “be safe.” I want it,” he asked.
Trump refused to reassure her. “I love where you're from,” he told voters. “But we still have to win elections. And they took advantage of this — you know, we have great Republicans, and they're great on this issue, and you will love them on this issue. And many of them just lost their lives in the election.”
Trump went so far as to criticize the six-week abortion ban signed by his Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as “terrible.”
Mr. DeSantis sought to capitalize on the socially conservative Iowan's comments. “How can you even claim to be pro-life when you're criticizing states that have enacted protections for infants with heartbeats,” he told Radio Iowa shortly after Trump made those comments in September. I don't know,” he said. . “If he's going to talk about this and say he's going to satisfy the Democrats on the right to life, I think all pro-lifers should know that he's preparing to sell you out. ”
But conservative voters gave Trump a pass, ultimately winning Iowa by a record margin.
Encouraged by the lack of blowback, Trump has privately gone further in blaming more hardline Republicans for his election loss. He said the two unsuccessful 2022 gubernatorial candidates, Tudor Dixon of Michigan and Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, were too “hardline” on abortion and didn't allow enough exceptions to win. He has repeatedly criticized him for wasting his campaign.
Trump has told advisers and allies that he wants to make a positive difference on the abortion issue by talking about his signature “radical Democratic” position in support of late-term abortions. Quite a few Americans.
lisa lerer and Ruth Igielnik Contributed to the report.
