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Donald Trump said on Friday he will vote against Florida's abortion rights ballot amendment after all, as he tries to stem the backlash from anti-abortion Republicans for having suggested earlier that he might support the measure in November.
Trump said that he opposes Florida's Amendment 4, which, if passed, will enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. His comments appear to be an attempt to manage the fallout from his interview with NBC News a day earlier, when he signaled an openness to supporting the ballot amendment.
Trump had been critical of Florida's six-week abortion ban in his NBC News interview. When asked how he would vote on Amendment 4, he said, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
Those remarks led anti-abortion activists to accuse him of betraying their movement. In that same interview, he said that if re-elected, either his administration or insurance companies would cover the cost of IVF for patients — a proposition that raised questions about how such a policy could be enacted and whether he’d even have the ability as president to fulfill such a politically and administratively challenging promise.
The controversy over Trump's position on his home state's ballot amendment speaks to the predicament he faces on the subject of abortion — one that’s been exacerbated by the fall of Roe v. Wade. Trump has bragged about being responsible for the demise of Roe and for returning the issue of abortion rights to the states. Yet he has criticized Republican-led states for passing extreme abortion bans. As president, he previously supported a national abortion ban but has since said he would not sign one into law if re-elected. His support for IVF also goes against the GOP platform's support for fetal personhood laws, which would likely have the effect of outlawing such treatments.
With abortion proving to be a losing issue for Republicans at the ballot box, Trump's inconsistency on reproductive rights seems in large part a play for votes. As he tries to appeal to Americans who support abortion rights without alienating his conservative base, the lengths he will go to court voters with diametrically opposed demands remains to be seen.