He called Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”
He said he’s going to come up with a deal on abortion that “the whole country can agree with.”
He claimed to be “on the side of women.”
If you didn’t know anything about Donald Trump and weren’t aware of anything else he’d said or done when it came to reproductive rights, you might have heard these three statements and thought, Hey, this guy really cares about bodily autonomy! He wants pregnant people to make their own decisions! We have nothing to worry about when it comes to his plans for abortion!
Of course, that is, unfortunately, very much not the case. Trump is quite obviously a clear and present danger to abortion access, despite trying to position himself as a moderate on the issue because of how poorly antiabortion Republicans have fared in recent elections. For one thing, this is the man who first ran for president on a vow to only nominate anti–Roe v. Wade judges, did exactly that, and then took credit for the landmark decision being overturned, declaring, “After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”
He’s now openly talking about a national abortion ban. Yes, literally moments after his “we’re on the side of women” claim, Trump told Sean Hannity: “The number 15 is mentioned. I haven’t agreed to any number. I’m going to see. We want to take an issue that was very polarizing and get it settled and solved so everybody can be happy.”
This admission—that he’s considering a 15-week ban—came less than two weeks after The New York Times reported that the ex-president had been telling advisers he supported a 16-week ban. As the outlet noted at the time, “One thing Mr. Trump likes about a 16-week federal ban on abortions is that it’s a round number. ‘Know what I like about 16?’ Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity, to describe a private conversation. ‘It’s even. It’s four months.’” The idea that he likes 16 weeks because it’s an “even” number, is of course, deeply Trumpian, in that he has the mind of child. But it underscores the fact that, like many a Republican, he’s just pulling this sh-t out of his ass without any consideration for the real lives it will impact.
“I wish I was surprised, but sadly, I can confidently say that all of us on this call saw this coming a mile away,” Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Joe Biden’s campaign manager, said after the Times report was published. “This is a man who is so proud of his role in overturning Roe v. Wade that he’s incessantly bragged about it on the campaign trail. Trump is a man who has called for punishment for women who get an abortion. He’s claimed credit for the chaos and cruelty happening across this country, even going as far as to say he is proud of it.”
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