Former President Donald J. Trump said in a video statement on Monday that abortion rights should be left up to the states, remarks that came after months of mixed signals on an issue that he and his advisers have worried could cost him dearly in the election.
Mr. Trump said his view was that the states should decide through legislation, and that “whatever they decide must be the law of the land, and in this case, the law of the state.” But he added that he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”
“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Mr. Trump said in the video, which he posted on his Truth Social website.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about will of the people,” he added. “That’s where we are right now and that’s what we want — the will of the people.”
Mr. Trump’s comments came as Democrats, who saw their voting base energized against Republicans in 2022 after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, have attacked the former president at every turn on the issue of abortion.
Mr. Trump, who has been trying to balance his desire to please the conservative base with his attempts to avoid alienating swing voters, faced blowback after The New York Times reported in February that he had said privately that he liked the idea of a 16-week national ban. He then talked about such a ban publicly, and the backlash continued. So Mr. Trump’s advisers tried to find a way for him to avoid a more specific position at a time when Republicans across the country are struggling with how to address abortion.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, anti-abortion groups have called for a national ban, which would face steep odds in the House and Senate. Mr. Trump did not refer to a national ban in his remarks, but his comments about leaving the matter to the states suggested that he was trying to avoid being pulled deeper into the issue.
But politically, Mr. Trump’s announcement that abortion should be left to the states will allow Democrats to tag him with some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, including a six-week ban in Florida that he has said was a “terrible mistake.”
In a statement, President Biden accused Mr. Trump, who appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who were pivotal in overturning Roe, of fostering “cruelty” and “chaos” surrounding abortion in the wake of the decision. He added that Mr. Trump’s position was effectively an endorsement of states that had passed tougher abortion restrictions, including six-week bans.
He also contended that Mr. Trump, despite his statement, would be likely to back a federal abortion ban if he won in November. “If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law,” Mr. Biden said.
By contrast, Mr. Trump’s remarks drew blistering criticism from his former vice president, Mike Pence, a staunch conservative whose presence on the 2016 presidential ticket was vital in giving Mr. Trump, a billionaire former abortion rights supporter, credibility with evangelicals.
“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,” Mr. Pence wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding, “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.”
And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who unlike Mr. Pence remains a Trump ally, also broke with the former president.
“I respectfully disagree with President Trump’s statement that abortion is a states’ rights issue,” he said in a statement, adding, “I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at 15 weeks.”
Mr. Trump spent hours on Monday afternoon lashing out at Mr. Graham and other Republican allies who had offered relatively tame criticism of his move.
“Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency,” he wrote on social media.
In the video, Mr. Trump said he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years. Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded” that Roe should be ended.
He then falsely claimed that Democrats wanted babies “executed after birth.”
For months, Mr. Trump has debated with advisers what he should say about abortion to stop Democrats from using the issue against him in November, as they did so successfully to outperform expectations against Republicans in the 2022 midterms.
Some anti-abortion activists had pushed Mr. Trump to support a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks, to set a minimum national standard and to block later-term abortions in Democratic-controlled states.
As recently as February, Mr. Trump had privately told advisers he liked the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of his deliberations. He made those comments as he was trying to fend off his last significant primary rival, Nikki Haley, in her home state, South Carolina.
He told his aides he wanted to wait until the Republican presidential primary contest was over to publicly discuss his views, because he didn’t want to alienate social conservatives before he wrapped up the nomination, the two people said.
Mr. Trump, who has approached abortion transactionally — and has spoken about it clumsily — since beginning his political career in 2015, told aides he liked the idea of a 16-week federal ban on abortion because it was a round number.
“Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months.”
The Trump campaign called the reporting “fake news” at the time, but Mr. Trump then publicly made clear he was considering supporting a 15-week ban, and his advisers issued statements saying he would come up with a national consensus.
Democrats immediately seized on the report of Mr. Trump’s plans, saying that Mr. Trump favored a national abortion ban. The blowback played a role in his decision to back away from announcing a national limit, according to people who spoke with Mr. Trump afterward. Some campaign advisers tried to distance Mr. Trump from the Times report about what he had been saying privately.
Mr. Trump’s statement on Monday disappointed some conservatives who were hoping for more restrictive efforts nationally.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”
She added, “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats.”
Others were more supportive of Mr. Trump, however. Carol Tobias, the president of the group National Right to Life, said that thanks to him, “the American people and their elected representatives on the state and federal levels now have greater authority to determine abortion policy and pass meaningful protections for unborn children and their mothers.”
Late into adulthood, Mr. Trump described himself as “very pro-choice” before announcing that he was “pro-life” as he considered running for the Republican nomination in 2011. In the 2016 election, he secured evangelical support by promising to choose his Supreme Court justices from a list of conservative judges who would be expected to favor overturning Roe.
But after the Supreme Court did what Mr. Trump engineered it to do, in June 2022, he told advisers the abortion issue could hurt Republicans badly in that year’s midterm elections. By the time the results were coming in — underwhelming for Republicans — Mr. Trump was privately discussing the issue as if he were a television pundit, claiming credit for being right about how abortion would cost Republicans politically.
Mr. Trump was scathing in his private assessments of Republicans who he thought were overly “harsh” in their positions on abortion, according to advisers. He often criticized two failed G.O.P. candidates for governor — Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan — for being too hard-line on abortion and for not supporting sufficient exceptions.
Still, even as Mr. Trump has avoided taking a clear public position on abortion, he often proudly highlights his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who ultimately allowed Roe to be overturned.
And at a Christian media convention in February, even as he avoided uttering the word abortion, Mr. Trump told attendees that he “took historic action to protect the unborn.” He also demonized Democrats on the issue, making the exaggerated claim that liberals support policies that would “kill the unborn in the sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth months, even after birth” and falsely claiming that the Biden administration had “hunted down” anti-abortion activists.
Anti-abortion activists are hopeful that Mr. Trump will be as willing to allow them to shape policy in a second administration as he often did when he became president in 2017.
“You must follow your heart on this issue,” Mr. Trump said in his video. “But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.”
