Donald Trump and the politics of abortion

Sam Hawley: He’s on trial for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal, but Donald Trump’s woes haven’t harmed him in the polls yet. Instead, it’s abortion that’s become one of his most problematic issues, as the former president works to get back to the White House. Some voters are turned off by his pro-life stance, and so he’s been changing his language. But will it win him votes? I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.

Prudence Flowers: Hi, I’m Dr Prudence Flowers. I’m a senior lecturer in US history at Flinders University, and I have had a long professional interest in abortion politics and law in the US.

Sam Hawley: Prudence, we’re going to unpack how abortion has become one of the most contentious issues ahead of the US election, and I think we should start with this video that Donald Trump recently posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights.

Sam Hawley: Tell me about that. What was he saying in that?

Prudence Flowers: In that video, he’s doing a few things. So it’s interesting that he starts by asserting his commitment and the Republican Party’s commitment to IVF being legal and accessible, and then he moves from that into identifying himself as being the person proudly responsible for ending Roe v. Wade, so overturning the legal right to abortion. And then he says, so it’s kind of a three-act thing, and then he says that he wants to see the issue of abortion regulation returned to the individual states to decide. He’s silent on a national ban.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state.

Sam Hawley: What would a federal ban entail? What does that mean?

Prudence Flowers: So what the current model that’s being supported by some anti-abortion groups and also Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, and people like that, they’re supporting a 15-week federal ban that would essentially ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks, except for, you know, rare instances that would include the life of the pregnant person and potentially other exceptions.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: I am strongly in favour of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Prudence Flowers: And Trump has kind of flirted with this ban, and he’s said a whole bunch of quite contradictory things. What’s notable is really that he doesn’t refer to the ban at all, which commentators have all taken to mean that he’s not supporting a federal ban.

Sam Hawley: All right, so this video put out by Donald Trump, how does it align with the statements that he’s made in the past, with his previous views? Because this goes right back, doesn’t it, to before he was even president.

Prudence Flowers: Trump has a very contradictory track record on abortion. In the 90s, he called himself, you know, very strongly pro-choice in the late 90s.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: I’m very pro-choice. I am pro-choice in every respect.

Prudence Flowers: Then at some point in the 2000s, he claims to have had a kind of epiphany and become anti-abortion.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: One thing about me, I’m a very honourable guy, OK? And I’m pro-life, but I changed my view a number of years ago.

Prudence Flowers: In 2016, he was really vehemently anti-abortion throughout that election, very kind of aggressive in his language and his rhetoric.

Interviewer: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle?

Donald Trump, fmr US President: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah, there has to be some form.

Prudence Flowers: And then he’s kind of dialled it back in the last few years. You know, he’s kind of gone all over the place in terms of what he’s saying.

Sam Hawley: So his views keep changing. And just a few weeks ago, he even called into the Sid and Friends In The Morning show on WABC radio, which is in the United States, of course.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that, and it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hardliners are agreeing, seems to be 15 weeks.

Sam Hawley: So, yeah, his views are all over the place.

Prudence Flowers: One thing he has been consistent about, I think, in the last year, is he’ll end all of these statements with a message, I think, to the grassroots and to other Republicans. And that message is something along the lines of, you have to win elections. So he’s using this language to win elections. And I think the silent part of that message is that he will do quite vigorous anti-abortion things if he wins election, but he’s not going to talk about it in the primaries or in the campaign.

Sam Hawley: So he’s changing his views for political reasons.

Prudence Flowers: Yes.

Sam Hawley: Because he wants votes. But is it clear what he actually believes or has it ever been clear?

Prudence Flowers: I don’t think it’s ever been clear exactly what he believes when it comes to abortion. Certainly, I think, you know, he has called himself on and off the most pro-life president ever. And I think he’s actually probably right to do so, regardless of what he personally believes. He advanced the anti-abortion agenda far more than any other president, including Ronald Reagan. In some ways, Trump’s personal views don’t really matter because he has achieved these kind of wholesale legislative and policy goals of the anti-abortion movement.

Sam Hawley: Well, as you mentioned, in that video on abortion, Trump took credit for the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which was, of course, the constitutional right for American women to have an abortion. Just explain that a bit more, because it goes to the fact that he appointed more conservative judges to the bench, right? And then they overturned Roe v. Wade.

Prudence Flowers: Yes, he was able, through various mechanisms, to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office. And those three were really instrumental in that majority decision in Dobbs. So Dobbs v. Jackson is the June 2022 case that overturned Roe v. Wade. He has taken sole credit for appointing these anti-abortion justices who in turn have overturned Roe.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: I want to thank the six justices, Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, incredible people, for having the courage to allow this long-term hard-fought battle to finally end.

Sam Hawley: So the question, Prudence, is what has happened since Roe v. Wade was overturned? What have we seen in America?

Prudence Flowers: It’s been very chaotic, to be honest. So currently there are about 14 states that have basically total bans on abortion, except to save the life of the pregnant person. And then you have about 10 states that have laws that are not a complete ban, but they might ban abortion after six weeks or after 15 weeks or after eight weeks, or they might ban certain surgical procedures that are commonly used for abortion. And it’s kind of evolving. There have been two significant Supreme Court cases at the state level. So the Florida Supreme Court and the Arizona Supreme Court have both made decisions relating to state abortion law. There’s a lot of flux. So I should also note, though, that abortion remains legal and protected as a right in 26 states plus the District of Columbia.

Sam Hawley: You mentioned Arizona. The Supreme Court there has ruled that the state must adhere to 160-year-old law, barring all abortions.

Prudence Flowers: Yeah. This 1864 law, which was passed during the American Civil War, was passed at a time when women, of course, didn’t have the vote, was passed at a time before pregnancy tests, and was also passed before Arizona was a state. So it’s a territory. Like, this is how old this law is.

Sam Hawley: And now Trump, presumably reading the public mood, has declared that he thinks that ruling actually goes too far, and he’s asking Arizona politicians to remedy it. Yes. And another case which is pretty amazing is in Alabama, where the Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. That really shocked people, didn’t it? And again, to that video with Trump, he was really arguing against that, supporting IVF, if you like.

Prudence Flowers: And I think it’s significant that that is the first thing he says in a video that is about abortion. He’s distancing himself from the elements of the anti-abortion movement that do seek to ban IVF.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: We want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.

Prudence Flowers: IVF is very popular, very popular, even amongst Republicans, even amongst many pro-life people. So Trump is really trying to distance himself from the Alabama ruling.

Sam Hawley: So the overturning of Roe v Wade, which Trump takes credit for, of course, has really left chaos across the United States. And what about for the women in the states where abortion is now banned? What are they having to do? It must be incredibly difficult.

Prudence Flowers: It is, and I think it’s really hard to grasp the horror that is unfolding because we can talk about numbers, but the experiences of each person trying to access an abortion, that’s often the most challenging time in their life, and now they’re faced with a context where it is illegal in the place where they reside. So it’s estimated at the moment that about one in three women of reproductive age live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted. And we know already before Dobbs that most people accessing abortion care were poor or low income. They were vulnerable groups of the population. They were often racial or ethnic minorities, and they already found it difficult to access abortion financially and often geographically, even when Roe was the law of the land. And so removing Roe and allowing states to ban abortion has meant that the most vulnerable and most disadvantaged people are the ones who bear the cost of these abortion bans. In some states, in places like Texas, where they’re essentially in kind of abortion deserts, people are travelling at least a day. They have to drive at least a day to access the nearest abortion provider. It’s now estimated that one in five patients had to travel interstate to access abortion care. And that is not a sustainable way to provide abortion care for people.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, OK. And of course, each woman has their own personal reason for seeking an abortion.

Prudence Flowers: Yeah.

Sam Hawley: So let’s go back to this political issue that’s playing out in the United States. Do you think that Trump can actually neutralise this as a negative for him?

Prudence Flowers: I think… So I think there’s a really interesting way of thinking about abortion politics. So there have always been a small percentage of Americans who want to see all abortion banned, and they will be very unhappy with returning abortion to the states. But most Americans don’t want to see a federal ban, but they might support abortion, but it’s not a make-or-break electoral issue for them. Before Dobbs, abortion never decided elections. So I think Trump is hoping that he can tap into that, that by presenting himself as a moderate, and I think contrasting himself with what he is presenting as extremists at the state level, that he can kind of skate through by claiming pro-life credit for ending Roe, but not being responsible for what happened. I think he’s probably underestimating the level of public anger about what has happened post-Dobbs and with Dobbs itself.

Sam Hawley: How big of an issue do you think it will be, will actually help Biden to remain in the White House, this issue?

Prudence Flowers: I think it’s really hard to tell. Certainly the Democrats are capitalising on abortion rights as an issue. They made it very clear from the start of this year that abortion was going to be front and centre of the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.

Donald Trump, fmr US President: I’m running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again, so women have a federal guarantee to the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn’t trust women. I do. I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message.

Prudence Flowers: But also what they are saying or trying to draw attention to is what they kind of view as the brutality of Republican state laws and what it’s doing to abortion patients and to abortion providers. I think things like Arizona, that will work for Biden. Arizona is normally a Republican-dominated state in presidential elections, but Biden won it incredibly narrowly in 2020. Electorally, I think that things like Arizona are really important for the Democrats.

Sam Hawley: And what do you think, though, for women in the United States? As long as there’s this conservative majority existing on the Supreme Court and if Trump returns, I suppose things could become even harder.

Prudence Flowers: I think if Trump returns, there are so many things he can do to damage abortion access, even in states that have indicated they want to protect it. And that’s the thing that a lot of the anti-abortion movement is counting on. They don’t need a federal ban. They need someone in the White House and they need support in Congress and they can do a huge amount of damage without ever passing a federal ban.

Sam Hawley: Dr Prudence Flowers is a senior lecturer in US history at Flinders University. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald and Nell Whitehead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. To get in touch with the team, please email us on [email protected] Thanks for listening.