Former President Trump said Wednesday it was “beautiful to watch” as individual states passed patchwork abortion laws, some more restrictive than others, suggesting it could unite the country even as Democrats use the issue to drive voter turnout to increase.
Trump was asked in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity about the issues Democrats hope to focus on in the November election, including abortion.
Reproductive rights have taken center stage politically in the two years since the Supreme Court's conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade, with some states enshrining abortion rights and others enacting restrictive laws that effectively ban the procedure.
“Now the states decide. And by the way, in many cases, like Ohio, it became… more liberal or more progressive than people had thought,” Trump told Hannity. “But the people of Ohio have decided. The people of Kansas have decided. The people decide now.
“And it took it off the shoulders of the federal government. They always wanted the states to decide it. And Roe v. Wade did not. It put it in the federal government,” he continued. “So now states are voting on it. And in many cases it's more liberal. In many cases, not in all cases. In some cases they go the other way. But the people decide. The people decide. And in many ways it's beautiful to look at.”
Trump both took credit for ending Roe v. Wade by appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court and attacked Democrats as “the radicals” on abortion for not supporting restrictions on late-term abortions.
“The states all decide now. And I think it's working the way people wanted it to work,” Trump said. “And it will bring the country together on an issue that was very, very bad.”
Trump has taken the position that abortion policy should be left to the states through legislation or ballot referendums, as Republican Party-led states have restrictive policies. But that has led to attacks, including from right-wing parties who expressed disappointment that the former president did not embrace a federal minimum standard for abortion.
The Biden campaign has repeatedly tied Trump to state-level bans and has highlighted the stories of women who faced life-threatening health issues and were unable to receive treatment or have to travel out of state for care because of those bans.
“Tonight, in prime time, America watched as Donald Trump was consumed with anger and visibly upset after his felony conviction; a man who clearly snapped and whose candidacy is growing more dangerous by the day,” Michael Tyler, Biden's campaign communications director, said in a statement. after the Hannity interview aired.
“It's why the American people voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump to begin with and why Trump can never step foot back in the Oval Office again,” he added.
