(LifeSiteNews) – Former President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reiterated his opposition to a federal abortion ban and once more stressed that any state-level bans should, in his view, contain exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies.
Roughly 28 minutes into a wide-ranging interview with the All-In podcast, Trump was asked, “Are you going to do a national ban” on abortion if elected in November.
I don’t need a national ban because it’s up to the states. Right now, what I did is something that people wanted to do for, from day one, 51 years it’s been going on. And if you remember, over the years — you’re too young — but over the years, all they wanted to do is they wanted to take it out of the federal government and move it into the states. And I got that done with the selection of three great justices, I got it done. And it was a big thing, but I will say over the last 10 years, or maybe a little bit more than that, they started talking about the number of weeks, and this and that, lot of different subjects came in, it was no longer just simply bringing it back. Every legal scholar, from Democrat to Republican, liberal to conservative, they all wanted it given to the states, because from a legal standpoint, from a lot of other standpoints, including even a moral standpoint, they wanted it brought back to the states. And what I did is I got it back to the states. And now the states are in charge, and the people are voting. And some votes are coming out the way certain people want it, and some votes aren’t coming out the way certain people want it. I mean, if you look at Ohio, I would say it was a more liberal vote that people would’ve thought, and you could say that for Kansas, then you look at Texas, it was a different story.
But the people of the states have got that issue now, and they’re voting. And the one thing that we have to remember, that there’s been a lot of radicalism talked about, and the radicalism is really on the Left, because they’re willing to do abortions in the eighth and ninth month, and even beyond that. I mean, we have some people, take a look at the governor of Virginia, the former governor of Virginia, where he talked about ‘we will kill the baby after the baby is born.’ That’s a very radical stance, and hopefully that’s all gonna be taken off the table now. But just to put it simply, it’s now up to the states. And like Ronald Reagan, I’m a believer in the exceptions, the three exceptions, as you know, rape, incest, life of the mother, the danger for the life of the mother. And we have a situation now where it’s in the states’ hands, and states are going to be voting. The last thing people want, people are going to be voting, the last thing people want is for that to go back into the federal government. It was always fought, and very importantly, and people wanted it, they wanted it back in the states, where it belongs legally and for a lot of other reasons.
“So you wouldn’t support a national ban?” the interviewer reiterated. “No, I wouldn’t support a national ban,” Trump replied. “No, I would not.”
Contrary to the president’s remarks, the idea that overturning Roe was the end of the national abortion battle was never a consensus view within the Republican Party, whose most recent national platform calls to “support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” The National Right to Life Committee, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Students for Life, National Pro-Life Alliance, Americans United for Life, and American Life League all have long supported various types of federal pro-life measures, and during his presidency, Trump himself called on Congress to pass a late-term abortion ban.
As he has done before, Trump claimed his exceptions stance puts him in the company of Reagan, who has long been considered a conservative and pro-life icon. But while Reagan expressed support for a rape exception in 1975 (two years after Roe), by the time he became president he had come to oppose it, advocating a constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationwide for any reason except to save a mother’s life, which he expressly called his “one exception.” Reagan also called for protecting the preborn through both national legislation and a constitutional amendment.
Abortion proponents have long invoked stories of rape and incest to generate emotional discomfort at the prospect of banning abortion, while pro-lifers continue to stress that circumstances of conception do not change the preborn baby’s innocence or humanity, and therefore society must do all it can to treat both mother and child with compassion and note the physical and psychological consequences of abortion.
Pro-lifers further note that rapists also exploit abortion to destroy the living proof of their crimes and continue molesting child victims. The pro-life group Live Action has documented Planned Parenthood’s complicity in several such cases in its “Aiding Abusers” video series.
Meanwhile, though some emergency situations in pregnancy can necessitate treatments indirectly resulting in a child’s death, numerous medical experts attest that intentionally killing a preborn baby is never medically necessary. Regardless, every state in the union with abortion prohibitions currently in effect also permits doctors to administer life-saving, non-abortive treatment to pregnant women even if it comes at the expense of a baby’s life.
Pro-abortion activists have long sought to keep abortion debates focused on such situations, to divert attention from the vast majority of abortions that are sought for far less “sympathetic” reasons. They have gotten mileage out of that approach, which has helped defeat pro-lifers in recent state ballot referendums and convinced national Republicans to take a more moderate stance on life this year.
Seemingly in response to that trend, Trump has repeatedly suggested his desire for some sort of national abortion compromise to put the issue “behind us,” even going so far as to call heartbeat-based abortion bans enacted by various states a “terrible mistake” and emphasizing his desire for whatever pro-life actions Republicans pursue to contain exceptions for the so-called “hard cases.”
Supporters have defended by citing Trump’s generally pro-life record during his last term and nomination of three of the justices who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade, as well as by citing persistent fears among Republicans that abortion has been to blame for their election woes over the past several years (a narrative that oversimplifies polling data and election results and discounts a host of unrelated factors). Various pro-life voices objected, yet Trump maintained his overwhelming lead all throughout the GOP’s 2024 primary and easily bested his two closest competitors, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH continue to indicate a razor-thin popular vote between Trump and radically pro-abortion incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden, albeit with Trump’s leads in swing states translating to a seemingly durable Electoral College advantage.