After months of trying to forecast where Donald Trump would land on abortion, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee claimed in separate statements this week that he would not sign a national abortion ban and that he believes abortion rights should be left to the states.
“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,” Trump said in a Monday statement. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.” In our current dystopian post-Roe landscape, Trump hopes “leave it to the states” will get him the most votes ― a supposed middle ground or compromise on abortion.
Trump’s supposed “will of the people” simply isn’t reflected in court rulings from hyper-conservative judges. Arizona’s Supreme Court decision this week greenlighting an 1864 near-total abortion ban, and the Florida Supreme Court doing the same for a six-week ban, is not the will of the people. It’s the will of a handful of conservative judges cherry picked by anti-choice Republicans. (The same goes for the IVF decision in Alabama last month.)
Still, let’s say we took Trump at his word. Even that is a feat; he continues to align himself with some of the most extreme anti-abortion thought leaders, some of whom will likely be a part of his administration if reelected. There’s also the issue of the Comstock Act, which Trump’s allies have said they intend to enforce to create a backdoor abortion ban.
Even if a national abortion ban doesn’t come to pass, the increasing number of states banning abortion procedures puts considerable strain on neighboring states that don’t, in turn endangering access nationwide.
The last two weeks have shown exactly what it looks like to leave abortion rights to the states: Vast regions of the country have turned into abortion care deserts that span hundreds of miles. And the access that’s left in pro-choice states isn’t boundless. Abortion clinics and funds in critical safe haven states like Virginia, Colorado and New York are struggling; wait times for appointments are often weeks long and many funds are simply running out of money.
For every state that puts a ban in place, there are at least three other surrounding ones where systems are further overrun and access gets worse. Leaving it up to the states is an unsustainable option that still impacts the entire country.
Dr. Jill Gibson, the chief medical…
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