Trump will likely have to clarify his stance on abortion

Donald Trump has said more about abortion in the final weeks of his presidential campaign than he has in the past two years. And it is becoming increasingly clear why he strategically avoided the issue for so long.

ABC moderators and Vice President Kamala Harris are likely to press Trump to clarify his stance on abortion during Tuesday night's highly anticipated presidential debate. Expect him to reiterate his views on late-term abortion and say something about Democrats murdering newborns and botched abortions – common, if completely untrue, arguments used by Republicans.

However, he may also be pressured to clarify his political stance on abortion earlier in pregnancy – as he has been outspoken on many issues recently.

Trump was instrumental in the repeal of federal abortion protections. The former president has boasted about it countless times and continues to falsely claim that “everyone” wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Now, as the election approaches and polls point to a closer race, Trump is quickly trying to change his mind.

Trump recently declared that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights” – a statement that sounds more like a Planned Parenthood press release than the statement of a man who once advocated punishing women who have abortions with prison sentences.

He has distanced himself from Project 2025 and its wish list of extreme anti-abortion proposals, claiming he hasn't even read it, even though the plan mentions him over 300 times and was created by several of his longtime allies. He has said he will not enact a national abortion ban if elected, and he will not enforce the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law that anti-abortion activists want to use to criminalize the mailing of abortion pills. But he seems to have no idea what mifepristone is, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions.

Trump, a Florida resident, seemed to indicate last week that he would vote for a Florida constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, telling NBC News that the state's current six-week abortion ban is “too short” (in contrast to his position in 2023, when he boasted that “there would be no six-week, 10-week or 15-week abortion bans without me”).

Hours later, Trump's campaign backtracked and clarified that he had not yet announced his voting behavior. The next day, Trump announced he would vote against the abortion amendment, falsely claiming that states that support abortion rights would allow women to kill newborns.

Trump has “changed his position on abortion four times in the last 48 hours,” Democratic Representative Adam Schiff (Calif.) told CNN shortly after the debacle surrounding the change in the law in Florida. The about-face shows that Trump “has no values,” Schiff said.

Trump's stance on the basic idea of ​​what role the state should play in setting abortion restrictions in the first place is also unclear. Since he began campaigning to dismantle federal abortion protections, he has repeatedly said he believes abortion regulation should be left to the states. But he has criticized some of the most extreme restrictions, saying Arizona's near-total abortion ban “went too far” and calling Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' six-week ban a “terrible mistake.”

The presidential candidate sparked an uproar within Republicans last week when he promised that the government would pay for fertility treatments – including in vitro fertilization, which can cost up to $30,000 per cycle. That idea runs counter to the views of many of his Republican colleagues, who have voted against protecting IVF as part of a broader anti-abortion stance. Trump himself has close ties to the anti-IVF movement.

“American women are not stupid,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said recently at a press conference organized by Harris' presidential campaign. Warren called Trump's IVF proposal a “sham,” adding, “Vague promises about insurance coverage will not stop a single extremist judge or state legislator from banning IVF.”

Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, urged voters in the appeal not to believe Trump's promises. Timmaraju pointed out that Trump's own party platform includes language suggesting that fertilized eggs should have full personhood rights under the 14th Amendment – a position that, taken to its logical conclusion, amounts to a call for a total ban on abortion and threatens access to contraception and IVF.

“Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he added the 14th Amendment to the Constitution [language] in the party platform,” Timmaraju said. “They wink at the anti-abortionists and say to them, 'Don't worry about what else I have to say to get elected. This is what I'm really going to do.'”

It seems that the only people who actually believe Trump when he says he is a moderate on the abortion issue are his supporters in his right-wing evangelical constituency, many of whom are angry that he is so hesitant about his more extreme positions.

Following his comments on Florida, conservative and far-right media recently published headlines such as “Trump stumps pro-lifers in Florida” and “How Donald Trump can win back pro-life support.”

“It is not the job of the pro-life movement to vote for President Trump,” Lila Rose, head of the national anti-abortion group Live Action, said in a recent interview with Politico.

If the election were today, Rose said, she would not vote for Trump because of his current policies – a statement that a Trump campaign adviser called a “tacit support” for Harris.

Rose said that if Trump doesn't change his mind soon, his anti-abortion supporters could easily support a candidate who can't be placed on the ballot. (Far-right anti-abortion activist Randall Terry will be on the presidential ballot in several states.)

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students For Life Action, said her phone has been “blowing up” with angry calls and text messages from anti-abortion activists who have refused to campaign for Trump since he suggested he might support Florida's abortion rights amendment.

“We want to go back to our base and show them that despite what they've heard in the media, despite some of his confusing or cutesy tweets, President Trump will continue to be a plus for the pro-life movement,” Hawkins told Politico on Thursday, following a report on the possibility of Trump appointing an anti-abortion activist to a prominent position in his administration.

The presidential debate is a high-profile opportunity to get more information from a candidate who has offered few details on one of the most important issues of this election season. The moderators will have to take Trump to task for his inconsistent abortion policies, which are at best nonexistent and at worst the implementation of the far-right fever dream of a national abortion ban under Project 2025.