Former US President Donald Trump on Monday he said publicly what he thinks about the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, for the first time in a truly clear way since the beginning of the electoral campaign for the US presidential elections. Trump, who will most likely be the candidate of the Republican Party, said that each of the 50 federal states should be able to decide whether or not to ban abortion and with what criteria, according to “the will of the people”. He also added that he believes that the possibility of resorting to abortion should be protected in cases of rape, incest and risks to the life of the mother.
These are not particularly surprising statements, and in fact they reflect the current state of US laws: since 2022, in fact, states have been free to regulate access to abortion, since the Supreme Court annulled the ruling that guaranteed it at a federal level ( i.e. in all 50 states). The issue has been much debated in the United States for some time: many conservative politicians, mostly Republicans, would like to limit abortion as much as possible, if not outright ban it, under pressure from the most reactionary movements; however, the majority of voters tend to think differently, and when votes were held on the matter the more restrictive proposals were regularly discarded.
Trump spoke about it on Truth Social, the social network he founded and often uses to communicate, claiming his role in removing the federal right to abortion. In fact, 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices who made that decision had been appointed by Republicans, and 3 of these by Trump himself. Trump’s main opponent in the presidential elections, which promise to be balanced, will be the incumbent president Joe Biden, a Democrat, who defeated him in the previous elections in 2020 and who since the 2022 ruling has been very capable of gathering consensus precisely by supporting greater protections for the right to abortion.
Trump’s position is clearly in favor of maintaining the current state of affairs, but it is not the most extreme supported by anti-abortion groups, within which some would like a ban on abortion at a federal level: Trump’s relative prudence could depend on by the fact that having very extreme positions even on abortion, as he does on almost every issue, could have alienated part of the electorate.
These statements have in fact exposed him to various criticisms from more conservative groups. Some anti-abortion associations, for example, considered his positions too soft, because Trump did not support the need to introduce greater restrictions on abortion at a federal level. Until a few days ago, Trump had actually seemed quite in favor of a ban on abortion throughout the United States after the 15th week of pregnancy. In the United States, most abortions occur within the 13th week, but before 2022 it was possible to perform them up to the 23rd or 24th week (in Italy it is legal up to the 12th).
On the other hand, Biden’s election campaign associated Trump with some of the strictest anti-abortion laws passed in states, such as that of Florida, which will come into force in May and bans abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy. Florida is a rather conservative state and is regularly governed by the Republicans, Trump’s party. He himself had criticized that law as too restrictive, but in Monday’s statements he actually defended it, affirming the right of states to move independently on the issue.