Donald Trump announced this week that he would make in vitro fertilization treatments free if elected president.
He slammed Florida’s six-week abortion ban as too restrictive, suggesting that as a resident of the state he may vote for an upcoming ballot measure that would make abortion legal until a fetus becomes viable.
And his running mate, JD Vance, pledged that Trump would veto a national abortion ban, even though Vance has previously backed such a measure. That comment came two days after Trump declared that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”
After months of slowly backpedaling on the abortion issue, Trump and his campaign have launched a new phase of their efforts to distance the former president from the fall of Roe v. Wade — scrambling to paint Trump, who has taken credit for nominating the Supreme Court justices who overturned the landmark ruling, as a candidate with more moderate views on the issue than much of his party.
Trump’s recent statements have infuriated many Christian conservatives who saw a second Trump administration as an opportunity to further limit abortion access by fighting for a national ban and cracking down on abortion pills nationwide.
“God saved Trump from an assassin’s bullet. He did not save him to pivot on the issue of abortion and support a policy that leads to killing unborn children in the United States of America,” said Jason Rapert, a former state senator from Arkansas and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.
But the recent comments from Trump and Vance suggest the campaign is eyeing moderate voters who support abortion rights — a group that has proved a formidable electoral force in the over two years since Roe was overturned. Many leading Republicans, including Trump himself, have publicly noted the backlash to abortion restrictions, with Trump announcing months ago that he believes the issue should be left to the states.
Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, planning a 50-stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” that will kick off Tuesday in Trump’s hometown of Palm Beach, Fla., and promising to sign a bill codifying Roe v. Wade.
Democrats have pushed back vociferously on Trump’s efforts to cast himself as a moderate on abortion, seeking to remind voters of his role in the end of Roe and the rise of strict state-level bans across the South and Midwest. Trump has also waffled on issues such as access to abortion pills, leaving key policy positions murky.
Some antiabortion Trump backers said they still see the former president as the best option for their cause.
On Thursday night, hours after Trump’s comments on IVF and the Florida ban, a close Trump adviser took a call with six leading female antiabortion leaders to hear their grievances and explain the campaign’s strategy on the issue, according to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, one of the country’s largest antiabortion groups, who was on the call.
The adviser shared a poll of swing state voters, asking which candidate they trusted on abortion, Hawkins said. The poll, Hawkins recalled, showed Harris with the advantage.
Polls show that policies supportive of reproductive rights are widely popular even with many Republican voters. That is especially true of IVF, which came under threat after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled this year that embryos created through IVF should be considered children, closing many IVF clinics across the state. Trump quickly voiced his support for IVF, and Alabama lawmakers voted to pass a pill protecting the procedure.
A Trump spokesperson said in a statement that Trump has not waffled on these issues throughout his campaign.
“President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion and has been very clear that he will NOT sign a federal ban when he is back in the White House. President Trump also supports universal access to contraception and IVF,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign.
While Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, says she is “devastated” by Trump’s recent comments, she has been urging her supporters to be pragmatic. On Friday morning, she was brainstorming a chart to post on social media that would compare the number of babies likely to be aborted under a Trump administration versus a Harris administration.
“Sometimes in the pro-life movement we have to vote against someone and not for someone,” Hawkins said. “We can’t let our anger with Donald Trump, our disappointment, cloud our judgment on this.”
Hawkins said she remains optimistic that a future Trump administration would further the antiabortion cause. She has been backchanneling with those close to Trump, she said, circulating a list of people who have strong antiabortion views to fill key Cabinet positions.
“Even if you have President Trump come in refusing to lift a finger, if we get good appointments, we will be able to stop some of the bleeding,” Hawkins said.