Trump Suggests Bringing the ‘Country Together’ on 15-Week Abortion Ban

He criticized GOP lawmakers who want to ban abortions without exceptions, warning that such policies could be politically harmful.

Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump departs a pre-trial hearing in a so-called “hush-money case” at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on Feb. 15, 2024. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump suggested on March 19 that he could support a 15-week national abortion ban while stressing the need to have exceptions.

“People are agreeing on 15 (weeks),” President Trump said in a March 19 interview with “Sid & Friends Podcast.”

“And I’m thinking in terms of that. It‘ll come out to something that’s very reasonable … Even hardliners are agreeing, seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. But I’ll make that announcement at the appropriate time,” he said.

“We’re going to come up with a time and maybe we can bring the country together on that issue.”

He pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade returned the authority on the issue to the state level, which he said was agreeable to everyone.

“All the legal scholars on both sides agree—it’s a state issue, shouldn’t be a federal issue,“ he said. ”It’s a state issue.”

The former president criticized Democrats for pushing “abortion in the ninth month, seventh month, eighth month.”

Democrats “have the radical theory because they’re willing to do abortions in the ninth month and even after the baby is born. You’ve seen that with the former governor of Virginia, where he said even after the baby is born … That’s not acceptable to anybody.”

President Trump was referring to former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, who suggested back in 2019 that a newborn infant could be killed after delivery if the mother and physician agree.

The governor’s office later said that Mr. Northam was talking about actions that physicians would take in case a woman under “tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities,” went into labor.

In his interview, President Trump stressed the need to have three exceptions to any abortion rule—rape, incest, and protecting the life of the mother. He also warned against pushing abortion laws that he said were too extreme.

“Here’s the problem—you have to win elections … And if you don’t win the elections, you’re going to end up being back where you started on this issue … I’ve never had a problem with the issue and a lot of people have. We’ve lost a lot of seats because of that and because of views that are just impractical.”

President Trump estimates that “about 80 percent of the Republicans” support having exceptions in the law.

In a Jan. 1, 2023, post on Truth Social, he blamed Republicans with hardline abortion ideologies for the party’s dismal performance in the midterm elections.

“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20!!” the former president wrote.

“It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters,” he wrote.

In January this year, President Trump said that he was against so-called ‘heartbeat bills” which seek to prevent pregnant women from getting an abortion once a fetus’s heartbeat is detected.

“A lot of people ... talk five or six weeks, a lot of women don’t know if they’re pregnant in five or six weeks,” he said. “I want to get something when people are happy. This has been tearing our country apart for 50 years.”

A Key Election Issue

Democrats are betting on the abortion issue to swing many votes in their favor in the 2024 presidential race.

“A vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is a vote to restore Roe, and a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to ban abortion across the country … These are the stakes in 2024,” President Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said earlier this year, according to AP.

During his recent State of the Union address on March 7, President Biden again highlighted the issue.

“In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote the following—and with all due respect, justices—‘Women are not without electoral … or political power.’ You’re about to realize just how much you’re right about that,” he said, directly addressing the Supreme Court justices.

“Those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot. We won in 2022.”

However, some Democrats worry that other issues, like the border crisis, could overwhelm abortion in the upcoming elections.

“I’m concerned that in blue states where reproductive rights are already protected, does the border become more salient than the threat to reproductive rights near metropolitan areas?” one lawmaker said during the House Democrats’ annual retreat last month, according to NBC News.

A Rasmussen Reports poll published this past week found that “eight months before the presidential election, economic issues and immigration matter more to voters than abortion.”

Another poll published last month showed that “voters do not currently perceive Trump as a threat to abortion rights.”

“Only a slim majority of voters say the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is ‘very important’ when it comes to addressing abortion (52 percent), compared with other issues that land at the top like inflation (71 percent), taxes and government spending (65 percent), national security and foreign policy (65 percent), and immigration (64 percent),” the survey said.