Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, said Saturday that Trump would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed the bill.
Asked on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” about GOP lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who would like to see Trump support and pass an abortion ban, Vance told Moderator Kristen Welker that Trump has “specifically” said he would veto the right to refuse.
“I mean, if you don’t support it, as the president of the United States, you basically have to dodge it,” Vance argued.
The Trump campaign’s latest stance comes as the former president has changed his stance on abortion policy over the years.
In April, Trump was asked on the tarmac in Atlanta if he would sign a national abortion ban if it passed Congress, and he simply said “no.”
But the former president didn’t clarify at the time what he considered a “ban.”
In 2018, when President Trump called on the Senate to pass a 20-week limit on abortions that had already passed the House of Representatives.
Last year, he celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and remove the constitutional right to abortion.
“After 50 years of failure, with no one even coming close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, to the great ‘shock’ of everyone,” Trump said in May 2023 on social media.
And as recently as March, Trump flirted with the idea of a 15-week federal abortion ban, telling a local radio host that “the number of weeks now — people agree on 15, and I think about it, and it becomes something very reasonable.”
“But people are really — even the hardliners agree — 15 weeks seems to be the number that people agree on,” Trump added in that interview.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
