Donald Trump has spoken more about abortion in the last few weeks of his presidential campaign than in the last two years. And it’s increasingly clear why he’s strategically danced around the subject for so long.
ABC Moderators and Vice President Kamala Harris are likely to press Trump to clarify his position on abortion during Tuesday night’s highly anticipated presidential debate. It’s safe to assume she’ll repeat her thoughts on abortion later in the pregnancy and say something about Democrats murdering newborn babies and botched abortions — common, if completely false, talking points for Republicans.
But she could also be forced to clarify her policy on abortion earlier in pregnancy — because she’s been all over the map lately.
Trump was critical of repealing federal abortion protections. The former president has bragged about it countless times and continues to falsely claim that “everyone” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Now that the election is approaching and opinion polls suggest the race is tightening, Trump is quickly trying to change his tune.
Recently, Trump declared that his administration “is going to be big on women and their reproductive rights” — a phrase that sounds more like a Planned Parenthood press release than a man who once advocated punishing women who have abortions with prison terms.
He has distanced himself from Project 2025 and its wish list of extreme anti-abortion policy proposals, claiming he hasn’t even read it, even though the plan mentions him more than 300 times and was drafted by several of his longtime allies. He has said he won’t enact a national abortion ban if elected, and he won’t enforce the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old obscene law that abortion opponents want to use to criminalize sending abortion pills through the mail. But she seems to have no idea what mifepristone, one of two drugs used to induce abortions, is.
Trump, who lives in Florida, appeared to suggest last week that he would vote to amend the Florida state constitution to protect abortion rights. He told 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 “without me there would be no six-week, 10-week, 15-week” abortion bans).
Hours later, Trump’s campaign backtracked and clarified that he has not announced how he will vote. The next day, Trump said he planned to vote against the abortion rights amendment, falsely claiming that pro-abortion states allow women to kill their newborn babies.
Trump has “changed his position on abortion four times in the last 48 hours,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told CNN shortly after the Florida amendments collapsed. The spin shows that Trump “has no values,” Schiff said.
Trump’s position on the basic idea of what role the government should play in imposing abortion restrictions has also been unclear. Since advocating for the repeal of federal abortion protections, he has repeatedly said he believes abortion regulation should be left up to the states. But he has criticized some of the more extreme restrictions, saying Arizona’s near-total abortion ban “went too far” and describing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ six-week ban as a “terrible mistake.”
The presidential candidate sparked a battle in the GOP 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. The idea runs counter to the beliefs of many of her Republican colleagues, who have voted against IVF coverage as part of a broader anti-abortion stance. Trump himself has deep ties to the anti-IVF movement.
“American women are not stupid,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said recently at a press conference organized by Harris’ presidential campaign. Warren called Trump’s IVF proposal “smoke and mirrors,” adding that “making vague promises about insurance coverage won’t stop a single extreme judge or state legislature from banning IVF.”
Mini Timmaraju, chairman of the Reproductive Freedom for All organization, urged voters 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, logically speaking, is a call for a complete ban on abortion and threatens access to birth control and birth control. IVF.
“Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he included the 14th Amendment en-US on the party’s platform,” Timmaraju said. “They’re going to show up to the anti-abortionists and tell them, ‘Never mind what else I have to say to get elected. This is what I’m really going to do.'”
It seems the only people who really believe Trump when he says he’s moderate on abortion are his right-wing evangelical base, many of whom are angry that he seems more extreme than his positions.
Following his Florida comments, conservative and far-right media outlets have recently published headlines such as “Trump stabs Florida pro-Lifers in the front” and “How Donald Trump can win back pro-lifers’ support.”
“The pro-life movement’s job is not to vote for President Trump,” Lila Rose, director of the national anti-abortion group Live Action, said in a recent interview with Politico.
If the election were held today, Rose said she would not vote for Trump based on his current policies — a statement a Trump campaign adviser described as Harris’ “tacit endorsement.”
Rose suggested that if Trump doesn’t change his tune soon, his anti-abortion base could easily throw its weight behind the candidate. (Far-right anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is running for president in several states.)
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students For Life Action, said her phone was “blowing up” with angry calls and texts from abortion opponents who have refused to pick up Trump after he announced his support for Florida’s abortion rights amendment.
“We want to go back to our base and show them that President Trump, regardless of what they’ve heard in the media, regardless of his confusing or cute tweet, is still going to be a plus column for the pro-life movement,” Hawkins told Politico on Thursday about a report on Trump’s possibility of appointing an anti-abortion leader to prominent position in his government.
The presidential debate is a high-stakes opportunity to get more information from a candidate who has offered few details on one of the most critical issues of this election season. Moderators need to hold Trump’s feet to the fire when it comes to his inconsistent abortion policy, which is at best non-existent and at worst fulfilling the far right’s fever dream of a Project 2025 national abortion ban.
