PLANTATION, FLA. (WSVN) - Former President Donald Trump is in damage control mode on the heels of an apparent pledge to change Florida’s strict new abortion law.
At an event in Michigan, Trump expressed his support for last year’s Supreme Court overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
“We have abortion, we have the whole thing brought back to the states, where it belongs,” he said. “That’s where everybody wanted it for years and years.”
On Friday, the Trump campaign attempted to clarify recent remarks made by the former commander in chief on abortion and on an upcoming amendment on Florida’s ballot.
An NBC News reporter asked Trump whether or not he will vote in favor of Amendment 4, which would enshrine the right to most abortions in the Florida Constitution. He suggested that he plans to vote yes.
“I’m voting that – I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he said.
A yes vote would overturn the state’s current ban on abortion after six weeks. The amendment says, “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.”
Medical experts say viability, when the child can live outside the womb, is typically around 24 weeks.
“If you go back 10 years, 15 years, all they wanted to do is, they wanted [abortion] back in the states; they didn’t want it to be in the federal government,” said Trump. “I was able to do that. I believe in exceptions for the life of the mother, If you look, incest, rape.”‘
But Trump’s team said that what sounded like a yes actually wasn’t. In a statement, campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt wrote the 78-year-old “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida,” adding that he “simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”
However, Trump’s response to NBC News does not seem to align with his campaign’s statement. A spokesperson for the campaign of his Democratic presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was quick to pounce.
“He has bragged openly about how he supports the decision of what the court did, and so, it is comical that Donald Trump would talk about women’s reproductive health,” said the spokesperson.
Abortion has been a hot issue state by state for Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.
“They celebrated for a while, but then they lost a lot of seats in 2022 that they would have won otherwise in the midterm elections, and it’s really catch up to Donald Trump now in the presidential race,” said a scholar with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Anna Hochkammer with the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition also weighed in on the issue. She said the welcomes the former president’s support for Amendment 4.
“I think he can see the same polling that we can see,” she said. “He said that he is going to be voting for more weeks. Well, in Florida, we’ve got a binary in front of us: yes on Amendment 4, or let the six-week cruel ban stand, so I think we have a pretty clear answer about his position, and interestingly, it’s a position that resonates with the vast majority of people across the state of Florida.”
Trump also publicly pledged to fund in-vitro fertilization for women, despite U.S. Senate Republicans having recently blocked legislation that would have made it a right nationwide for women to access IVF.
Friday afternoon, Trump addressed his position on abortion during a campaign appearance in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He reiterated he is still in favor of more weeks beyond Florida’s current six-week ban, but because he believes Democrats are too radical, he will be voting no.
“For the radicalization on the Democrat side, we’re voting no,” he told a Fox News reporter.
Following Trump’s apparent turnaround, Harris issued a statement that reads in part, “Donald Trump just made his position on abortion very clear: He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme, it applies before many women even know they are pregnant.”
For Amendment 4 to become part of the Florida Constitution, it has to pass in November with 60% of the vote.
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