Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, President Biden, and anti-abortion groups on Monday slammed former president Donald Trump’s stance that abortion policies should be left to the states, avoiding a position on any national limit at which the procedure should be banned.
In a long-awaited announcement posted on his Truth Social account, Trump said, “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will [be] more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
Just last month, Trump had suggested he would consider supporting a 15-week federal ban with exceptions in cases of incest and rape, and to protect the life of the mother.
In a statement, the Biden campaign criticized Trump for misleading his stance on abortion, saying if Trump “is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law.”
In response to Trump’s announcement Monday, Healey accused the former president of supporting “horrific abortion bans” that restrict women’s access to basic health care and freedom.
“When someone tells you who he is, believe him. Donald Trump again said today that he’s ‘proudly’ responsible for overturning Roe v Wade, stripping the rights away from millions of women, and unleashing a public health emergency,” Healey said in a statement. “Don’t let Donald Trump lie his way out of this.”
Trump’s announcement received immediate backlash from President Biden, local representatives, and from leading anti-abortion groups.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position. 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,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement.
Here’s a look at some initial reactions to Trump’s announcement on abortion policy:
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren didn’t immediately comment in the wake of Trump’s announcement, but speaking to CNN ahead of the release of his position, in a tweet posted on Sunday of a CNN interview, said Trump was “responsible for the horrifying state of abortion rights in America.”
“Donald Trump aggressively and deliberately put in place an extremist Supreme Court that denied Roe vs. Wade after having sworn they were going to follow through on precedent-overturned Roe vs. Wade the first chance they got,” Warren added.
The Biden campaign swiftly released a new abortion-focused ad hours after Trump’s announcement that shares the emotional story of a Texas woman who almost died from a miscarriage.
Trump also drew ire from Republicans — and even members of his own former administration — who have pushed to support a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks and criticized him for failing to endorse national restrictions on abortion.