One day after displaying sOh my Donald Trump said Friday that he supported a referendum in Florida protecting abortion rights, but that he would actually vote against it.
“Nine months is ridiculous. You’re saying you can have an abortion at nine months,” the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with Fox News Friday.
If passed, Amendment 4 would amend the Florida Constitution to restore abortion access until the fetus is viable, generally around the sixth month. Florida currently bans abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.
Miscarriages late in pregnancy are extremely rare, and often occur when the fetus is not expected to survive after birth or when the mother’s health is seriously threatened.
In 2020, Trump, a Florida voter, claimed that the then-Democratic state’s abortion law allowed the murder of newborns, a lie he often repeats.
“In some states, like Minnesota and others, you actually have a system in place where you can execute a baby after it’s born, and all that is unacceptable,” he said. “So I’m going to vote no for that reason.”
President Trump boasted last year that “if it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t be a six-week, 10-week, 15-week” ban, but he has repeatedly said he believes Florida’s current ban is too restrictive.
In recent months, Trump has tried to present a moderate stance on abortion, which has proven to be a losing issue for Republicans since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has repeatedly told voters not to take his relaxed stance on abortion seriously, pointing to his long record of opposing access to abortion.
In response to President Trump’s comments Friday, Harris said she was clearly aligned with the anti-abortion movement.
She said: “Donald Trump has just made his position on abortion very clear. He will vote to support an extreme abortion ban that applies to many women before they even know they are pregnant.”
She added: “Of course he thinks it’s a ‘beautiful thing’ that women in Florida and across the country are being turned away from emergency rooms, facing life-threatening situations and having to travel hundreds of miles to get the care they need.”
President Trump said Thursday he would vote for the Florida amendment, saying he would “vote for more than six weeks,” but his campaign quickly backtracked.
“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote in Florida. He has simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” campaign press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in a news release.
Measures like Florida’s have passed in several other states since Roe’s fall. In all seven states that put the abortion issue to voters, including red states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, and swing states like Ohio and Michigan, voters voted in favor of abortion rights.
