“BEYOND THIS TRUMP MOMENT”
Conservatives – along with everyone else – have long grappled with how to understand Trump’s stance on abortion, which has shifted often over the years.
His stacking of the Supreme Court with justices handpicked for their abortion views allowed it to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that had enshrined the procedure as a right.
That seismic move in 2022 made him a hero to many in the anti-abortion movement, which had driven conservative voters to the polls for decades.
“I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” he wrote in a Truth Social post last year. “Without me, the pro-Life movement would have just kept losing.”
But since then the issue has become an electoral problem for the Republican Party, firing up voters in many local, state and national elections to back Democrats, who have vowed to restore Roe.
Meanwhile the anti-abortion movement is pushing Trump to go further, with some decrying fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and others focused on demanding an unpopular national abortion ban.
Trump has appeared to want it both ways, dodging the question of a ban by insisting repeatedly that “everyone” wanted individual states to make their own decisions on abortion, even as he accuses Harris and the Democrats of “executing” babies.
In another Truth Social post last week, he also called the Republican Party a “leader” on IVF.
He announced on Thursday (Aug 29) – without any details on funding – that as president he would mandate free IVF treatments for any Americans who wanted it.
He also suggested in an interview with NBC that he would vote to overturn Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks’ pregnancy, which was “too short”. His campaign then quickly walked this back, saying Trump did not actually specify how he would vote when the referendum takes place in his home state in November.
Trump will “further alienate pro-lifers and divide his own party while doing absolutely zero to win over anybody pro-choice”, Klein wrote in the National Review.
That does not mean that conservatives will suddenly start voting for Harris, but for many on the right it appears to be time to move on.
“The cause is way bigger and younger than Donald Trump,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion non-profit, told AFP.
“It will shape the (Republican Party) beyond this Trump moment.”
Source: CNA
