(Washington) Donald Trump said Monday that he wanted to leave the way open for American states to legislate on abortion, appearing to reject a national ban on this issue, at the heart of the presidential campaign.
“States will determine by vote or by law, or perhaps both. Whatever their decision, it must be law,” said the former Republican president in a video published on his Truth Social platform.
As a candidate again in November against Joe Biden, he himself prides himself on having, through his appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, resulted in the reversal of jurisprudence of June 2022 which canceled the federal guarantee of the right to ‘abortion.
Since this decision giving states full latitude to legislate in this area, around twenty have banned or severely restricted access to abortion.
” A lot [d’États] will have a different number of weeks” as the pregnancy limit for an abortion, Donald Trump explained in his video on Monday. “Some will be more conservative than others, and that’s how it is. At the end of the day, it is the will of the people that counts,” he says.
The Republican also accused Democrats of being in favor of abortion until the final months of pregnancy, and “even execution after birth.” An unfounded assertion.
In March, Donald Trump first indicated that he could support a national ban beyond 15 or 16 weeks.
Referendums
But he also felt that it was not up to the federal administration to decide on these questions, warning against the electoral cost of an overly conservative position on this eminently sensitive subject.
Since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision, conservatives have lost every referendum or vote addressing the issue of abortion.
This, even in states that are usually theirs, like Ohio or Kansas.
Democrats, for their part, are capitalizing on this hot topic, well aware that the issue has made them a winning machine — at least in local elections.
Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, regularly travels to American campuses in the most contested states in the election to discuss the subject.
PHOTO NICOLE NERI, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Kamala Harris visited the St. Paul Health Center, where abortions are performed, on March 14 in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“Across the country, extremists are attacking women’s access to health care and reproductive rights,” she again denounced at the end of March in North Carolina, urging Americans to support Joe Biden on November 5 to protect access to abortion.
In mid-March, she became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion clinic in Minnesota.
Across the country, Democrats have also encouraged the organization of mini-referendums on abortion in several decisive presidential states – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania – on the same day as the election between Donald Trump to Joe Biden.