(Washington) Donald Trump, Republican candidate for the American election, said he was in favor of a national ban on abortion beyond a certain number of weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape, incest, or threat for the life of the mother, in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
The ex-president spoke in an interview with Fox News this week, a few days after securing the Republican nomination, at the same time as outgoing President Joe Biden for the Democratic camp.
Asked about an article from New York Times in February reporting discussions with his campaign team on a proposal to ban abortion beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy, except in these three cases, the ex-president reaffirmed his satisfaction that his appointments to the Court Supreme Court allowed the reversal of jurisprudence in June 2022, which abolished the federal guarantee of this right.
While Joe Biden has made the protection of the right to abortion, threatened in the event of a Republican victory, one of his campaign axes, Donald Trump has recognized the electoral risk of an overly conservative position on this subject.
I think we need all three exceptions [viol, inceste, ou menace pour la vie de la mère]although there are a few places where they don’t exist.
Donald Trump, on Fox News
“I tell people, ‘First of all, you have to follow what your heart tells you. But beyond that, you have to get elected.” And without these three exceptions, I think it is very, very, difficult to get elected,” he explained, citing the case of the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022.
“You must allow exceptions,” insisted Donald Trump without specifying after how many months he planned to make abortion illegal, but arguing that such a limit existed elsewhere in the world, notably “in France or in different countries of Europe”.
“I will present a recommendation very soon and I think that this recommendation will be accepted” by the party authorities, he added.
In every local referendum addressing the issue of abortion since the Supreme Court ruling, with states now having full latitude to legislate in this area, conservatives have lost, even in states that are usually theirs, such as Ohio or Kansas.
Donald Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, who announced this week that he would not support him for the November election, accusing him of having deviated from the “conservative project”, also deplored on Sunday that he did not take a stronger stance on abortion during the 2020 campaign.
“I would like our candidate to approve a ban at least from 15 weeks,” he said on CBS.