Donald Trump’s attempt to take the sting out of abortion as an election issue risks angering both sides of the debate.
He will please some conservatives by calling this a states’ rights matter. For most Americans, however, this is an issue that demands consistency and federal leadership.
Trump’s problem is that his core Republican supporters want a uniform hard line and Democrats favour a return to the status quo ante under Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed the national right of access. This generally permitted abortion up to the stage when a foetus is considered viable, at about 24 weeks.
Trump opened Pandora’s Box by appointing a cadre of conservative judges who carried out his repeated pledge to overthrow Roe and handed power back to individual states.
This created confusion as Republican administrations pushed through a patchwork of different restrictions. It is telling that, unlike in the UK, where the Abortion Act permitting the procedure up to 24 weeks was passed in 1967, Congress has never been able to agree on a law. It was left up to the judges, effectively, to legislate.
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In post-Roe America, after Florida’s decision to bring in a six-week ban from May 1, legal abortion is practically unavailable across the entire South.
Trump’s core evangelical vote believes life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder — they want a president who makes persuasive arguments for a federal ban. But his aim is to limit damage on a vulnerable issue.
Liberals angry at “regressive” conservative restrictions find Trump’s attempt to distance himself from “his” Supreme Court ruling on Roe laughable.
A poll by Gallup last year found 69 per cent of Americans wanted universal access to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy (end of the 13th week). Fifty-five per cent, however, were against it being legal in the second trimester (up to 26 weeks).
This gave Trump an opportunity to try and appeal to a majority of voters by toying openly with setting his personal view on an abortion limit of 15 or 16 weeks. Ultimately he decided against a firm figure, presumably because it would enrage the Christian right while, on the other side, any step back from Roe would be hammered by his opponents as an assault on long-established women’s rights.
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Democrats have hit on the idea of local ballots on enshrining abortion in state constitutions as a way of keeping the issue in the front of voters’ minds, as seen in last November’s vote in Republican-controlled Ohio, which passed by 56.8 per cent to 43.2 per cent.
A similar measure will appear on the ballot paper in Florida and probably also the swing states of Arizona and Nevada when voters are picking their president this November.
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Abortion has become the chief rallying cry of the Biden campaign to motivate his base and appeal to a crucial group of floating voters: suburban women. Trump has majored on illegal immigration and drugs flowing in across the border as his chief appeal to this constituency.
He is stressing that he is actually a champion of rights — the power of states to pass their own legislation — but this is less emotive than defending either the rights of the unborn, which he ducked, or the rights of women, which Biden will champion.
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Trump’s campaign will be able to reject Biden’s frequent claim that Trump “wants to ban abortion nationwide” but there is no way the Democrats will let him off the hook for paving the way for bans and restrictions across the country.
