Trump Punts On Abortion

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Trump has now said Abortion laws should be left up to each individual state. The Susan B. Anthony list which is a prominent anti-abortion group immediately condemned his position. Meanwhile the Biden campaign immediately said he was endorsing the full bans some states have or want to enact. This seems like a foolish move on Trumps part. Then he doubled down on taking credit for the Dobbs decision in the same video that announced this new position. Apparently Trump Inc. has a sale on “kick me” signs this week.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump said he believes abortion should be left to the states in a video released Monday morning outlining his position after months of mixed messages and speculation.

“Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights,” Trump said in the video posted on his Truth Social site. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land — in this case, the law of the state.”

Trump, in the video, did not say when in pregnancy he believes abortion should be banned — declining to endorse a national cutoff that would have been used as a cudgel by Democrats ahead of the November election. But Trump’s endorsement of the patchwork approach leaves him open to being attached to the strictest proposed state legislation, which President Joe Biden and his reelection campaign have already been working to do.

In the video, Trump again took credit for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end Roe v. Wade, saying that he was “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of the constitutional right to an abortion and thanking the conservative justices who overturned it by name.

While he again articulated his support for three exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk — he went on to describe the current legal landscape, in which different states have different restrictions following the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, which upended the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others and that’s what they will be,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s all about will of the people.”

The announcement drew immediate condemnation from SBA Pro-Life America, one of the country’s most prominent groups opposed to abortion rights.

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, in statement. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”

Biden’s campaign said Trump was “endorsing every single abortion ban in the states, including abortion bans with no exceptions.”

“And he’s bragging about his role in creating this hellscape,” campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said on X.

Trump had suggested last month in a radio interview that he was leaning toward supporting a national abortion ban at around 15 weeks of pregnancy — early in the second trimester.

“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I’m thinking in terms of that,” he said on WABC radio. “And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”

At the same time, Trump seemed reluctant to embrace a federal ban.

“Everybody agrees — you’ve heard this for years — all the legal scholars on both sides agree: It’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue,” he said.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had written on his social media site Sunday night that he planned to issue a statement on “abortion and abortion rights” after sidestepping questions about when in a pregnancy he believes the line should be drawn.

Republican-led states have ushered in a wave of new restrictions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats believe the fight over abortion rights helps them at the polls and have outperformed expectations in elections since.

Trump had long argued that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe gave those who oppose abortion rights “tremendous power to negotiate.” He said he wanted to use that leverage to strike a deal that he hoped would “make both sides happy” and bring the country “together” — even though the issue is one of the most contentious in American politics, with opponents viewing abortion as murder and proponents seeing it as a fundamental women’s right.

Trump has tried to thread the needle on abortion throughout the campaign. He routinely takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, which he has called a “moral and unconstitutional atrocity,” and has called himself the “most pro-life president in American history.”

But he has also repeatedly criticized fellow Republicans for being too hard-line on the issue, blaming candidates who did not allow for exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the pregnant person is at risk for the party’s losses that November.

“A lot of politicians who are pro-life do not know how to discuss this topic and they lose their election. We had a lot of election losses because of this, because they didn’t know to discuss it. They had no idea,” he said at the Concerned Women of America 2023 Leadership Summit.

In the video, Trump told Republicans that they must “follow your heart on this issue. But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.”

Instead, he has tried to paint Democrats as the ones who are extreme on the issue.

“It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position,” he said in the video.

Democrats and President Joe Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, have been spotlighting the issue as they work to draw a contrast with Trump.

Polling has consistently shown that most Americans believe abortion should be legal through the initial stages of pregnancy. About half of U.S. adults said abortions should be permitted at the 15-week mark, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted last June.

Data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the vast majority of abortions from 2012 to 2021 were performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established the constitutional right to abortion until the time of viability, at around 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Abortions later in pregnancy are rare and are often performed due to serious fetal abnormalities, when the life of the mother is at risk, or when women have faced significant delays accessing the procedure, according to the health policy research firm KFF.

Blurb from AP.

[TC Talks]

If he had promoted banning he'd be cooked for sure. People want access to safe abortions.

[zzand]

and he, or someone in his campaign, knows that which is why he punted.

[audiophile]

Sounds like he is going Libertarian. If he was smart he would pick Rand Paul for VP to cement in the limited federal government stance.

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Sounds like he is going Libertarian. If he was smart he would pick Rand Paul for VP to cement in the limited federal government stance.

That would quickly terrify over half the country. Rand Paul is an extremist.

[audiophile]

Being 34 trillion in debt is extremist, Rand Paul is the sane one.

[radiofann]

So much for the theory of Trump being in the pocket of White Evangelicals.

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So much for the theory of Trump being in the pocket of White Evangelicals.

Trump seems to be in a no-win scenario on this and this course of action is no better in that regard.

[TC Talks]

Being 34 trillion in debt is extremist, Rand Paul is the sane one.

Here are Rands greatest hits...

1. Government shouldn't require private businesses to serve customers of all races
2. The U.S. is secretly planning a European Union-style merger with Mexico and Canada
3. A nuclear Iran isn't necessarily a threat
4. Rein in Medicare — but not Medicare's payments to doctors
5. Mountaintop coal mining is good for real estate values

[Honeyman]

I mean, he says shit like this:

"They support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. "The concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth. That's exactly what it is — the baby is born, and the baby is executed after birth."

Are his supporters THAT DUMB that they actually believe it?

[radiofann]

I mean, he says shit like this:

"They support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. "The concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth. That's exactly what it is — the baby is born, and the baby is executed after birth."

Are his supporters THAT DUMB that they actually believe it?

Some states do have retroactive abortion…. It’s called the death penalty.

[Matt]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/politics ... index.html

Former President Donald Trump has accurately boasted that he played a central role in getting the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the country. But he keeps making wildly inaccurate claims that the court’s 2022 decision to rescind Roe had universal support.

In a video statement on abortion policy he posted on social media Monday, Trump said: “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended.” Later in his statement, Trump said that since “we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” states are free to determine their own abortion laws.

[A1B1C1D1]

State by state, the majority of voters want legal abortion and euthanasia. It will be interesting if it can make the Constitution in Florida with a 60% pass mandate. Ohio tried to change that to restrict abortion access in '22, which didn't work either.

Legal IVF is now on the Republican platform so the party itself is no longer pro-life from that standpoint. It was already on shaky ground for its support of the 'pill' which can also terminate conception instead of preventing it. As it is, the evidence of a link to breast cancer is dismissed as religious hysteria, while California labels everything else with a cancer warning.

It's the economy, stupid! Biden wins easily, and based on my investments I am fine with that. The economy has bounced back from the COVID shutdown, banks are paying savers again, energy is plentiful and affordable, stock indexes which wield trillon$ are at a near record.

[zzand]

Energy affordable? Power companies nationwide have raised customer bills and gas prices are above 3.55 a gallon most everywhere. What drugs are you on?

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Energy affordable? Power companies nationwide have raised customer bills and gas prices are above 3.55 a gallon most everywhere. What drugs are you on?

Pre-Covid it wasn’t that much different gas wise.