For creepy Donald Trump, the politics of abortion must have once seemed so simple. I strongly suspect that he does not care one way or another about this issue so he could decide what to do purely on the basis of expediency, of what serves his own interests best politically and personally. Conscience or moral and ethical considerations would play no role, though there is little evidence that those factors ever play any role in his thinking.
When he ran for president in 2016, he made a big play for Christian fundamentalist and evangelical support, and abortion has always been a big issue for them. They hated the 1973 US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that enshrined the right to an abortion in the constitution. So creepy Trump made a promise to them that he would appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn that ruling, and he did so. He said that the abortion issue was now in the hands of the states to decide how they wanted to deal with it, and he seemed to think that he could now walk away from it. As far as he was concerned, that should have been the end of that. He should have been able to bask in his success as the man who had done what previous Republican presidents had failed to do, and thus earned the undying gratitude of the anti-abortion community.
But that was not the end. What he had not realized was that for him the abortion issue is like quicksand and once he stepped in it, walking away was not possible. And, as he now struggles to extricate himself from it, he only keeps sinking deeper.
His mistake seemed to lie in thinking that overturning Roe was all that the ani-abortion extremists sought. But in reality, the real end goal of anti-abortion zealots is a total ban nationwide of all abortions with few or no exceptions. Getting rid of Roe was just the first step in their quest. Once that was removed, they aggressively moved forward, beginning by pushing friendly red state legislatures to enact sweeping restrictions to abortion.
These extreme measures fueled a massive backlash from groups seeking to protect women’s reproductive rights and freedoms. who quickly set out to bring back those rights and the means they adopted was state-by-state referenda. They passed measures even in red states like Ohio, Kansas, and Kentucky protecting women’s right to choose. And they have kept going. On the ballot this year are abortion-related measures in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota.
Supporters of women’s reproductive rights laid the blame for these statewide anti-abortion measures at the feet of creepy Trump for enabling them by causing Roe to be overturned and he cannot shake off the charge. He and the GOP are taking a severe beating in this issue. Creepy Trump knows that majorities of the public support the right to abortion under circumstances similar to those laid out in Roe, and oppose the extreme restrictions that some state legislatures have imposed. He tried to avoid saying exactly where he stands of the issue by being ambiguous about whether or not he supports a federal ban, what exceptions to the bans he would like to see, and the time period for which abortions should be allowed. He has tried to dodge the issue by vaguely saying he is agreeable to whatever each state decides.
But in Florida, his evasive tactics have been stymied. Abortion is on the ballot this year in a way that poses the issues at play in a stark form and that is giving him the biggest headache. Since he is a resident of Florida, he is being pressed to say how he is going to vote on that particular issue and there is no way to bob-and-weave over such a binary choice.
Here is a brief history of Florida law.
On April 1, 2024, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the constitution’s right to privacy does not include the right to abortion, overturning a previous decision by the court in 1989 finding that the privacy clause did include a right to abortion. The ruling allowed the state’s 15-week abortion ban, passed by the legislature in 2022, to take effect. In 2023, the legislature passed another bill, known as the Heartbeat Protection Act, to ban abortion at six weeks, which was contingent on the state supreme court overturning its prior ruling and allowing the 15-week ban to take effect. The six-week ban took effect on May 1. Before 2022, abortions were legal in Florida until 24 weeks.
Six weeks is such a short period that many women would not even know they are pregnant then, so it is effectively a total ban. The ballot initiative known as Amendment 4 to be voted on in November would extend the period until fetal viability occurs (usually around 24 weeks) or if necessary to protect the patient’s health. This is anathema to the anti-abortion zealots.
The initiative would provide a constitutional right to abortion before viability or when “necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
The following language would be added to the state constitution: “Except as provided in Article X, Section 22, no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.
The initiative would not change the state legislature’s authority to enact a law requiring the parents of a minor to be notified if their child is seeking an abortion, with exceptions that can be attained through a judicial waiver.
Creepy Trump is stuck in political quicksand and is flailing around. In an interview on Thursday, he said that he thought that six-weeks is too short a period, suggesting that he would vote in favor of Amendment 4, but his campaign, sensing the danger, immediately put out a statement that said that he had not actually decided. But his statement nevertheless produced an immediate massive backlash from the anti-abortion zealots.
Thursday’s comments – in which Trump appeared to be open to voting in favour of the constitutional amendment – were heavily criticised by leaders in the anti-abortion movement, which plays a critical role in shaping conservative politics in the US.
“If Donald Trump loses, today is the day he lost,” conservative pundit Erick Erickson wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“The committed pro-life community could turn a blind eye, in part, to national abortion issues. But for Trump to weigh in on Florida as he did will be a bridge too far for too many.”
Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on X that Trump’s comments on reproductive rights, including on the six-week ban, “seem almost calculated to alienate prolife voters”.
“Pro-life Christian voters are going to have to think clearly, honestly, and soberly about our challenge in this election – starting at the top of the ticket,” he said.
The very next day, creepy Trump reversed himself and said that he now supports the six-week limit and will vote against the ballot measure. So basically he has now committed himself to be in favor of an almost total ban on abortion.
The Florida ballot measure requires a supermajority of 60% to pass. Polls on public sentiment have been variable and indicate that support is well over 50% but not definitely over 60%. But supporters of the initiative are working hard to put it over the top.
Creepy Trump is faced with the demands of the anti-abortion zealots to strongly oppose the measure and thus finds himself stuck in the very public hardline position that he has carefully sought to avoid. If he tries to avoid saying anything further, and the ballot measure passes, he will be blamed for the loss by not fighting hard enough for it, and antagonize the zealots who are already suspicious that he is not truly on their side. If he does aggressively fight to defeat Amendment 4, he will cement in the public perception that he is committed to a total ban on abortion. Any weasel words from him and weird JD Vance that they oppose a federal ban will be seen as hollow.
It is political quicksand and he is stuck in it. The more he lurches from one position to another, the deeper he sinks.
But who would they vote for as president if not Trump? I’m sure there are candidates in at least some states who support a total national ban on abortion, but voting for them will increase the chances of Harris, in a mirror image of progressives’ and pro-Palestinians’ dilemma.
For decades Republicans ran on thr issue of promising to overturn Roe. None of them actually did of course. Now that Trump actually did it, he is finding out.
Creepy Trump knows that majorities of the public support the right to abortion under circumstances similar to those laid out in Roe, and oppose the extreme restrictions that some state legislatures have imposed. He tried to avoid saying exactly where he stands of the issue by being ambiguous …
All of which indicates a higher level of reality-cognition than many of us give him credit for. Does he tune in and out according to the issue, or the time of day, or what?
My guess is he’ll blame the overturning of Roe v. Wade on Joe Biden, who was president when it happened.
There are a lot of low-information and seriously misinformed voters out there, people who couldn’t name a single Supreme Court justice, much less tell you who appointed who or when they were appointed or what they voted for or against.
I’m talking about the sort of people who blame Obama for FEMA’s poor response to Hurricane Katrina. They exist.
You forget the ones who blame Obama for the actual existence of Hurricane Katrina…
@4, feralboy: they also blame Obama for 9/11…7 years before he was elected.
Katydid @6: I haven’t heard that one before. Could they be blaming him for a vote he cast as a senator?
It does’nt seem to impact the polls much though -- still too close. I read so many articles about trumps latest disaster and so on and so forth and yet its still not clear that he is going to lose.crazy.
@7 billseymour; now, they just blame him because they’ve been told it was his fault.
Locally, a man in my neighborhood found out he had incurable, inoperable cancer back in 2007. He had no health insurance. In late 2007 (near Christmas), he chose to blow his brains out with a gun, which was tragic for a whole host of reasons including his life insurance refusing to pay out for suicide, leaving his stay-at-home wife and teenaged kids in financial disaster. The local pastor and several of the neighbors insisted that the poor man was forced to kill himself because of “Obama’s Death Panels”. I pointed out every time someone in the neighborhood repeated that lie that 1) there was no such things as death panels, and 2) the election wasn’t going to happen for another year, and Bush was the president, not Obama.
To this day, whenever his name comes up, the response is a reflexive, “Obama’s death panels” and shaking of heads. The facts simply don’t matter.
Medicare does actually have a in home hospice care program for elderly people who have been diagnosed with various conditions that are expected to eventually be their cause of death.
It’s a visit by a nurse, who comes every six moths to perform a health assessment, recommends various therapies they can provide, and gives advice to the family caregivers.
My 83 yo Mom was recently diagnosed with Emphysema, and has had a visit from a RN to start this process of keeping her as comfortable and healthy as possible. She gets additional benefits under this program.
We don’t mention the word hospice around her, but the Nurse Practitioner is not a death panel in any way that makes sense. It’s palliative, end of life care.
As many folks have pointed out over the years, this is not, strictly speaking, true. Back in the 1970s, evangelicals considered abortion to be unfortunate, but politically it was a ‘Catholic issue’, and not something they concerned themselves with. The opposition to abortion from the Protestant Evangelical side didn’t start until the 1980s, during the Reagan years and the rise of the ‘Moral Majority’ as an attempt to push fundamentalists and evangelicals into conservative politics, which even then was being deliberately set up in an attempt at stacking the courts to overturn rulings they didn’t like.
But the people doing this only used Roe v. Wade as the case because it was easy to politicize and it could get the conservative Catholics working with them in attempts to stack the courts. It wasn’t what they were really after. No, based on the timing, the case that really got the ‘Moral Majority’ going was Bob Jones University v. United States, which was all about BJU doing things like prohibiting inter-racial dating and making sure that the black students they felt they were forced to accept now didn’t get into the good on-campus housing, and being angry that the government wasn’t letting them keep their tax-exempt status while doing that. So it was always about racism, and just using abortion as a proxy so they wouldn’t look like the horrible people they were.
Given that, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Voting Rights Act was gutted years before they finally got around to Roe v. Wade (which most of the big movers and shakers didn’t actually want to mess with because it was still useful as a recruiting tool).
See The ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal or a discussion of some of this from twelve years ago.
What’s morbidly funny here is that the Republican party let themselves be taken over by a force they didn’t really understand -- Trump. And they’re shocked and disappointed that he hasn’t turned out to be what they thought (i.e. someone who would pursue their agenda, rather than being out purely for himself). But in turn Trump himself surfed off the support of the fundagelicals, a force HE didn’t really understand, and now he’s finding they’re not satisfied with what he provided and they’re NOT going to just go away. We can only hope that the matter becomes academic when Harris wins. Come USA, you can do the right thing.
jenorafeuer @11: yes, I remember reading that somewhere else a couple of years ago. Thanks for reminding me what it’s really about.