Former President Donald Trump signaled Thursday that he plans to vote for Florida‘s abortion referendum this fall, which would reverse his home state’s six-week abortion ban that went into effect following the Supreme Court’s 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Though Trump has taken credit for installing the Supreme Court justices who struck down the ruling, which created a national right to abortion, he has also angered the anti-abortion movement by opposing restrictions on the procedure at the federal level.
The former president previously hinted that he would soon unveil how he planned to vote on the Florida referendum, known as Amendment 4, during a press conference earlier this month, but in a Thursday interview with the Daily Mail, he revealed that he considers a six-week ban too restrictive.
“I want more than six weeks,” he stated. “I think six weeks is a mistake. And I’ll be expressing that soon, but I want more than six weeks.”
Trump has consistently argued this year that abortion rights should be decided at the state level, a point he again stated in his interview, but he did not say outright Thursday whether he would veto or sign a federal abortion ban into law should it come across his desk in a second term.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) made headlines over the weekend by pledging that Trump would not sign a federal abortion ban into law as president, and the former president himself claimed on social media Friday that a second Trump “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to inquiries seeking to square his and Vance’s comments.
However, Democrats argue that Trump’s positions on the issue amount to empty promises.
“This seems so blatantly obvious it almost doesn’t bear mentioning, but Donald Trump cannot be trusted — on abortion, or any other issue,” a veteran Democratic strategist with close ties to Vice President Kamala Harris‘s 2024 campaign told the Washington Examiner earlier this week. “He’s just covering his a** because this is clearly a losing issue for him, and, in doing so, he’s pissing off a big chunk of his own base.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Anti-abortion activists have voiced frustration with Trump’s handling of the political issue, claiming that he is betraying the movement with his pivot to the middle.
“It is not a pro-life position, it’s not an acceptable position, and it does not provide the contrast on this issue to the degree that we have had in the past between him and Kamala Harris,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said after Trump came out against using the Comstock Act to ban sending abortion medication through the mail. “What President Trump is doing is suppressing his own support.”