As he continues his campaign to return to the White House, former President Donald Trump has apparently shifted his stance a bit on women’s reproductive rights, and one of his former close allies has taken umbrage with the change of opinion.
After boasting several times about his move to pack the Supreme Court with conservative judges being the catalyst for the landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade, Trump is seemingly distancing himself from the idea of a federal ban on abortion and instead is saying it should be a “states’ rights” issue.
“President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). “By nominating and standing by the confirmation of conservative justices, the Trump-Pence Administration helped send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and gave the pro-life movement the opportunity to compassionately support women and unborn children.”
“In the landmark Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court returned the question of abortion to the states and the American people,” he continued. “The American people elect presidents, senators and congressmen, and a majority of Americans long to see minimum national protections for the unborn in federal law. But today, too many Republican politicians are all too ready to wash their hands of the battle for life.”
Pence then declared that he believes the majority of Americans vote for politicians who push pro-life policy.
“Republicans win on life when we speak the truth boldly and stand on the principle that we all know to be true – human life begins at conception and should be defended from womb to tomb. However much our Republican nominee or other candidates seek to marginalize the cause of life, I know pro-life Americans will never relent until we see the sanctity of life restored to the center of American law in every state in this country.”
That assumption though is apparently no longer shared by the President he served under. When asked about a recent decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to put a 160-year-old law into effect that had extremely narrow exceptions for acceptable abortions, Trump seemed to admit that it was too extreme.
“That’ll be straightened out, and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights. That’ll be straightened out, and I’m sure the governor and everyone else are going to bring it back into reason and that will be taken care of, I think, very quickly,” Trump said.