(LifeSiteNews) – Former President and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump once again stressed support for abortion exceptions and his desire to “make both sides happy” on the issue, doubling down on a theme that has caused great consternation among pro-lifers but did not slow down his dominance of the Republican Party or GOP presidential primary.
Trump appeared Sunday on Fox News Channel’s MediaBuzz for a wide-ranging interview with host Howard Kurtz, who at one point asked about the ex-president’s reported interest in a federal cutoff point of 16 weeks for legal abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest, and to save a mother’s life.
“We’re gonna find out, and pretty soon I’m gonna be making a decision, and I would like to see if we could do that at all, Howie. I would like to see if we could make both sides happy,” Trump answered. “Look, a lot of things were done with Roe [v. Wade] by killing it. Number one, we brought it back to the states […] and, you know, they [the U.S. Supreme Court] did something that from a lot of standpoints is extremely good.”
“Number one, the Democrats are the radicals on this issue, because it’s OK to have an abortion at seven, eight, nine months, and even after birth according to that,” he said. “And I will say this, if you speak about the subject right, you actually, we actually have, it’s like fertilization. On fertilization. You saw I took the lead on that, and it’s actually now our subject, a positive. We want to help women. And that could have been a very negative thing. We want to help women." In vitro fertilization (IVF) has dominated the national conversation for weeks now, with Democrats attempting to stoke fears that it is on the verge of being banned ever since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that because frozen embryos are children under the law, their accidental destruction can be grounds for wrongful death lawsuits. Alabama officials quickly made clear the industry would remain untouched for the foreseeable future, while Trump and other Republicans rushed to signal their support for IVF, which pro-lifers lament has muddied the opportunity to raise awareness of the moral and ethical problems with the practice.
“With Roe, you take a look, abortions in the seventh, eighth, ninth month,” Trump continued. “One thing that you say is nobody wants that. Killing of a baby after the baby’s born, that was the governor, the ex-governor [Ralph Northam], last governor prior to this one, by the way, is a good guy [Glenn Youngkin], governor of Virginia, he said put the baby aside and you discuss with the mother whether or not essentially you wanna kill the baby. They are the radicals. There’ll be a certain, there’s a certain, certain spot, if you look at France, you look at different places in Europe, if you look at a lot of the civilized world, they have a period of time, but you can’t go out seven months, eight months, and nine months, and if the Republicans spoke about it correctly, never hurt me from the standpoint of elections, it hurt a lot of Republicans.”
“I think you have to have, you have to have the three exceptions, because it’s just — there are a few places where you don’t,” the former president went on. “But I tell people, number one, you have to go with your heart. You have to go with your heart. But beyond that, you also have to get elected, OK, and if you don’t have the three exceptions, I think it’s very, very hard to get elected. We had a gentleman from Pennsylvania you know [Doug Mastriano], who was doing pretty well, he refused to go with the exceptions and he lost in a landslide for governor. Nice man, lost in a landslide. You have to go with the exceptions, and the number of weeks. I’ll be coming out with a recommendation fairly soon. I think the recommendation will be accepted.”
Since last September, Trump has repeatedly suggested that if elected again he wants to find a “certain number of weeks” both sides of the abortion debate could agree to, to put the issue “behind us,” even going so far as to call heartbeat-based abortion bans enacted by various states a “terrible mistake” and emphasizing his desire for whatever pro-life actions Republicans pursue to contain exceptions for the so-called “hard cases.”
Supporters have defended by citing Trump’s generally pro-life record during his last term and nomination of three of the justices who went on to overturn Roe, as well as by citing persistent fears among Republicans that abortion has been to blame for their election woes over the past several years (a narrative that oversimplifies polling data and election results and discounts a host of unrelated factors). Various pro-life voices objected, yet Trump maintained his overwhelming lead all throughout the GOP’s 2024 primary and easily bested his two closest competitors, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Polls currently have Trump leading Democrat incumbent President Joe Biden, although voters also say that likely convictions in left-wing venues will make them less likely to support him. It’s also speculated that Democrats may replace Biden, given serious concern among Democrats over his age and mental health. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s moderation on life will negatively impact pro-life turnout for him, especially in light of Biden’s heavy emphasis on pro-abortion absolutism.
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