Amid recent fissures in Donald Trump’s evangelical support base over the issue of abortion, the former president took to Truth Social this week with a post that could be seen as an olive branch.
Trump raised the ire of pro-life advocates last week when he declared that if elected in November, his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
The post came a little more than a month after a significant revision of the Republican Party Platform. While Republicans in 2016 called for a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks, the platform adopted in July stated that in light of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the power of abortion legislation “has been given to the States and to a vote of the People.”
This revision was sharply criticized by pro-life Republicans and evangelical leaders, who expressed frustration that what had been a deeply held principle of the party was now being discarded for the pragmatic purpose of increased electability.
While Trump was once hailed as “the most pro-life president” in American history for appointing justices to a Supreme Court that went on to overturn Roe in June 2022, he has become increasingly more sympathetic to the pro-choice cause since that landmark decision.
For instance, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Heartbeat Protection Act, which banned all abortions in Florida where an unborn child’s heartbeat is detectable, Trump criticized the legislation, calling it “harsh.”
“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said of DeSants’ decision to sign the bill into law in April 2023.
At the time, Trump declined to specify whether he would support restrictions or an outright ban on abortions at the federal level. But he has now made his stance clear via his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
In an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Vance indicated that Trump wants to “end this culture war over this particular topic.”
“Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions, because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue,” Vance said. “Let the states figure out their own abortion policy.”
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Vance went as far as to say that Trump would veto a bill banning abortion at the federal level.
