Former President Donald J. Trump told his advisers and allies that he liked the idea of a 16-week national ban on abortion with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the mother’s life, according to two people directly connected. knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations.
Mr. Trump has carefully avoided taking a clear position on abortion restrictions since Roe v. Wade was canceled in mid-2022, galvanizing Democrats ahead of that year’s midterm elections. He has said privately that he wants to wait until after the Republican presidential primary to publicly discuss his views because he does not want to risk alienating social conservatives before securing the nomination, both said. people.
Mr. Trump has approached abortion in a transactional manner since he became a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect the same approach.
One thing Mr. Trump likes about the federal 16-week abortion ban is that it’s a round number. “You know what I like about being 16?” Mr. Trump asked one of those people, who requested anonymity, to describe a private conversation. » Is equal. It’s been four months.
When discussing potential vice presidential candidates, Mr. Trump often asks whether they “agree on abortion.” He is immediately dismissive when he hears that a Republican does not support “the three exceptions.” He tells his advisers that Republicans will continue to lose elections with this position.
Mr. Trump hopes to defeat his latest primary rival, Nikki Haley, in the South Carolina Republican primary on February 24. The state has restrictive abortion laws that took effect in 2023, essentially banning the procedure after six weeks.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Mr. Trump told his advisers that he believed the decision would hurt Republicans. Since then, he has become convinced that the abortion issue is largely responsible for the string of Republican defeats in congressional elections.
And he is acutely aware of his own vulnerability: he named the three judges who made this decision possible, a fact for which he has publicly claimed credit in several contexts. These statements have already been included in ads, and Democrats plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remind voters of this fact.
By supporting a 16-week ban, Mr. Trump would try to satisfy both social conservatives who want to further restrict access to abortion and Republican and independent voters who want more modest limits on the procedure.
Abortion is currently banned at various stages of pregnancy before 16 weeks in 20 states, including Mr Trump’s home state of Florida. The type of ban Mr. Trump has discussed privately would restrict abortion rights in the other 30 states where abortion is legal beyond that limit. And the question of exceptions limited to the life of the mother is also controversial. In Texas, state courts have ruled that women cannot benefit from limited exceptions for «life-threatening conditions» related to pregnancy, even in cases where their fetus faces a serious diagnosis and fertility and the woman’s future health were threatened.
In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, did not respond to his private remarks.
“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that would satisfy everyone,” Ms. Leavitt said, adding that he “has appointed strong constitutionalist federal judges and justices of Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. and returned the decision to the states, something others have been trying to do for more than 50 years. She attacked President Biden and congressional Democrats, calling them too permissive on abortion.
Mr. Trump, who has described himself as supportive of abortion rights for most of his adult life, announced in early 2011, when he was considering a presidential run in the Republican primary, that he was now anti-abortion.
Yet Mr. Trump never seemed comfortable discussing it. In an interview with television host Chris Matthews in early 2016, Mr. Trump said there needed to be «some form of punishment» for women who had illegal abortions, a comment his campaign quickly walked back.
At the time, Mr. Trump needed to convince skeptical social conservatives that he would implement anti-abortion policies and choose socially conservative judges, and he chose a deeply conservative vice president in Mike Pence to serve. help in this persuasion effort.
Since then, Mr. Trump has kept his promises and built a powerful connection with evangelical voters himself, so he has felt less need to pander to them. After Roe was overturned, Republicans have struggled to find ways to talk about abortion, now that they can no longer simply say they oppose it. The concept of some sort of national ban has become a priority, with a 15-week federal abortion ban emerging as the benchmark that many anti-abortion activists have set for Republican candidates.
A 16-week ban would not end many abortions: Nearly 94 percent of abortions occur before 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control. Nor is such a ban based on medical research. Even 15 weeks falls short of the time when important screenings take place during a pregnancy to examine the fetus for rare, but potentially life-threatening diseases. Instead, it has become a position that some Republicans, based on polling, believe will be the most politically palatable to voters.
An AP/NORC poll released in July 2023, a year after Roe was overturned, showed that a slim majority disapproved of a ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In the survey, Republicans mostly supported such a measure and Democrats mostly opposed it. A six-week ban was polled poorly by a majority of Americans, including Republicans, while a majority of Americans do not support allowing abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, according to the investigation.
One of Mr. Trump’s allies, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, introduced legislation in 2022 calling for a 15-week ban on abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother after closing this window.
Mr. Trump never supported the bill, from which other prominent Republicans have distanced themselves, and he said as recently as last fall that the decision should be left to the states. A prominent anti-abortion group criticized him for the statement, but its leader was appeased after meeting with Mr. Trump and Mr. Graham.
There are signs that adopting any form of national ban is unpopular with a large share of independent voters and potentially risky for Mr. Trump. For example, in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to rally voters around what his campaign called a «15-week limit» last November failed, and Democrats outperformed expectations in the state’s congressional elections. State.
So far in this race for the Republican nomination, in which primary voters generally reward candidates who oppose abortion rights, Mr. Trump has avoided answering the question of whether he would support a national ban. Instead, he talks about abortion as if it were a real estate transaction. He took credit for giving “great negotiating power” to anti-abortion activists.
“What’s going to happen is you’re going to find a certain number of weeks or months,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in September. “You’re going to come up with an act that will make people happy.”
At a Fox News town hall in January, a week before the Iowa caucuses, a socially conservative voter asked Mr. Trump to «reassure me» that he would protect «every person’s right to life, without compromise.
Mr. Trump refused to reassure her. “I like where you come from,” he told the voter. “But we still have to win the elections. And they used that – you know, we have great Republicans and they’re great on this issue, and you would love them on this issue. And many of them were wiped out during the elections.”
Mr. Trump went so far as to criticize the six-week abortion ban signed by his former Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, calling it “terrible.”
Mr. DeSantis tried to capitalize on that comment in socially conservative Iowa. “I don’t know how you can even claim to be pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies with heartbeats,” he told Radio Iowa shortly after M Trump made the comments in September. . “I think if he says he’s going to make Democrats happy when it comes to the right to life, I think all pro-lifers should know he’s preparing to betray you.”
But conservative voters gave Mr. Trump a pass and, ultimately, a record victory in Iowa.
Mr. Trump was encouraged by the lack of blowback and went even further privately by blaming more radical Republicans for the party’s electoral losses. He has repeatedly criticized two losing gubernatorial candidates in 2022 – Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania – for squandering winnable races by being too «far right» on abortion and not not allowing enough exceptions.
Mr. Trump has told his advisers and allies that he wants to try to turn the issue of abortion into a positive by talking about what he calls a «radical Democratic» position of supporting late-term abortions, which are rare, but unpleasant for an audience. large number of Americans.
Ruth Igielnik reports contributed.