Former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly bragged about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, seemed to suggest on Thursday that he will vote in favor of Florida’s pro-choice amendment that will be in front of voters in November.
“I think the six weeks is too short, it has to be more time,” Trump told NBC News, referring to the state’s six-week abortion ban that went into effect in May. When the NBC News reporter asked the former president if that means he will vote in favor of the abortion rights amendment, he responded: “I’m gonna be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that “everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated for years,” ever since the 1973 ruling was handed down. He emphasized that he does believe in abortion exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at risk.
The former president has been asked multiple times how he would vote on Florida’s Amendment 4, which would restore abortion access in the state until fetal viability.
“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a news release.
Trump’s vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also appeared to try to clean up Trump’s comments on the Florida amendment in a Friday morning interview with CNN.
“The president is simply saying he doesn’t like six weeks,” Vance said. “I think he will make an announcement on what he actually wants to do on the Florida law in particular.”
“But again President Trump has been extremely consistent that he’s going to make this decision as a citizen of Florida, but he wants the national government that he intends to lead to be focused on national issues like inflation, the cost of housing and the wide-open southern border,” Vance added. “He wants states to make their own abortion policy, and that will be his position for the remainder of the campaign and the remainder of his presidency.”
Earlier this month, Trump, a Florida resident, told reporters he believes “the vote [on the amendment] will go in a little more liberal way than people thought.” A recent poll of Florida voters found that nearly 70% of respondents said they would vote in favor of Amendment 4.
But Trump has generally pivoted away from the question or given non-answers — similar to how he has discussed abortion care as a whole on the campaign trail.
The GOP presidential nominee has been scrambling to define his abortion stance since it has become apparent that the topic is a losing issue for Republicans. Despite his long history of anti-abortion policy, he’s been somewhat critical of abortion restrictions, stating that Arizona’s near-total abortion ban “went too far,” and last year describing GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ six-week abortion ban as a “terrible mistake.” He claims he won’t enact a national abortion ban if elected or create a backdoor national ban by enforcing the Comstock Act, yet he continues to align himself with some of the most extreme players in the anti-choice movement. Several of his allies authored Project 2025, an extreme wish list of policy proposals that include surveilling pregnant people, criminalizing the contraceptive morning after pill, and banning abortion nationwide.
Trump claimed he supported in-vitro fertilization earlier this year when an Alabama Supreme Court case effectively criminalized IVF in the state. It was only after national outrage over the ruling that Trump spoke up in support of IVF, seemingly trying to distance himself from anti-abortion advocates in his party who are also anti-IVF. Despite his new promise to make IVF free to any American if elected, Trump has deep ties to the anti-IVF movement.
