A powerful pro-life group is scolding former President Donald Trump for telling a major newspaper that abortion access is an issue that should be decided at the state level.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America rebuked Mr. Trump by name on Thursday after the ex-president’s team was pressed on the bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed to ban abortion in that state after six weeks of pregnancy.
“President Donald J. Trump believes that the Supreme Court, led by the three justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the state level,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told the newspaper.
The Trump team was referring to the Dobbs decision that overturned the nationwide right to abortion in Roe v. Wade and ushered in a series of new restrictions in red states.
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the abortion issue is “a matter of human rights, not states’ rights.”
“Saying that the issue should only be decided at the states is an endorsement of abortion up until the moment of birth, even brutal late-term abortions in states like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey,” she said.
Ms. Dannenfelser put 2024 candidates on notice, saying her group will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to back, at a minimum, a 15-week national standard on abortion.
“The Supreme Court made clear in its decision that it was returning the issue to the people to decide through their elected representatives in the states and in Congress,” she said. “Holding to the position that it is exclusively up to the states is an abdication of responsibility by anyone elected to federal office.”
Abortion will be front and center in the 2024 campaign.
Democrats are furious over abortion restrictions but see the issue as a useful political cudgel against the GOP.
Democrats wielded the issue effectively in 2022 and say a simmering court debate over abortion-pill access will spur voters, particularly young people and women, into their column.
Mr. Trump is getting hit from both sides on the issue, with the Democratic National Committee painting him as too extreme on the issue.
The DNC last week highlighted the former president’s decision to appoint a trio of conservative justices who backed a more stringent position on abortion access, tipping the scales after the Roe decision stood for nearly half a century.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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