Less than 24 hours after saying he disagrees with Florida’s near-total ban on abortion care, Donald Trump now says he will cast a vote to keep it in place.
On Thursday, the former president told NBC News that the state’s recently-enacted ban on abortions at six weeks of pregnancy is “too short” and that he wants “more weeks.”
If Florida voters approve Amendment 4 on their ballots this fall, the state’s constitution would be amended to state that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
The amendment would effectively overturn the six-week ban that Trump said he opposes.
However, the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News on Friday that he plans to vote against it.
“So I think six weeks, you need more time. Six weeks, I disagreed with that from the early primaries, when I heard about it,” he said.
“At the same time, the Democrats are radical, because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the nine months,” added Trump, who then repeated his false claim that states allow doctors to “execute a baby after birth.”
He said he would vote against the measure for that reason.
Trump’s description of Florida’s amendment – the “Right to Abortion Initiative” — is also wrong.
If passed, the amendment would prevent the state from passing any law that bans abortion care at any point in a pregnancy, before a fetus is viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks. The state would also be prohibited from enacting any law that criminalizes emergency abortion care at any point during a pregnancy.
The former president’s conflicting statements on reproductive healthcare over the last 25 years have drawn criticism from both abortion rights supporters and his anti-abortion allies.
Florida’s six-week ban – a point before many women even know they are pregnant — was only possible after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade. Trump routinely takes credit for that decision, after he appointed three conservative justices to the nine-member court who voted to reverse the 50-year precedent.
A radically reshaped federal judiciary under his administration has also supported anti-abortion measures that included threats to emergency care and widely used abortion drugs.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, recently rejected Democratic legislation to protect IVF access. And his allies in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have also supported federal anti-abortion laws and so-called “fetal personhood” language that is now baked into the GOP’s official 2024 platform.
Trump’s allies behind Project 2025, a right-wing think tank’s blueprint for his administration, would also effectively outlaw abortion drugs and strip access to birth control and fertility treatments.
In response to Trump’s latest comments, Vice President Kamala Harris said that her White House rival made his position on abortion “very clear”, and underscored her plan to enshrine abortion rights protections into federal law.
“He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant,” she said in a statement through her campaign.
“So, of course he thinks it’s a ‘beautiful thing’ that women in Florida and across the country are being turned away from emergency rooms, face life-threatening situations, and are forced to travel hundreds of miles for the care they need.”
She added: “I trust women to make their own health care decisions and believe the government should never come between a woman and her doctor.”
Earlier on Friday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed Trump’s attempts to amend his record on abortion and in vitro fertlization as “gaslighting” and “smoke and mirrors.”
“American women are not stupid,” she said during a press call for Harris’s campaign.
The former president will “do anything to distract from his abysmal, horrifying record on this issue,” added Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju. “It’s desperation and it’s lies,” she said.
Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, is launching a 50-stop bus tour to promote reproductive healthcare access — and making its first stop in Trump’s backyard of Palm Beach, Florida, on September 3.
Florida is among more than a dozen states that have outlawed all or most abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision.
Since earlier this year, Florida’s six-week ban makes it a felony to perform or actively participate in an abortion in the state after roughly six weeks’ gestation, or about two weeks after a missed period.
Voters in at least 10 states will vote on abortion rights measures this November, including measures that could enshrine a right to seek abortion care in their states’ constitutions.