Florida abortion measure shows how Trump has struggled with abortion politics after Roe

The biggest conservative policy success of former President Donald Trump's term in office may also be his 2024 campaign's undoing: the overturning of Roe v Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that had protected abortion rights for half a century. That has left the field open for proposed state and federal abortion restrictions that leave Trump in a bind.

Trump has tried to avoid embracing his party's most unpopular policies during the 2024 campaign while also placating anti-abortion advocates.

The former president doesn't endorse a national ban on abortion, which his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio has been open to in the past, but he brags about appointing the U.S. Supreme Court justices who made sweeping new abortion restrictions possible in many states when they overturned Roe.

That juggling act finally caught up with the former president this week, exposing how fraught abortion politics are for the Republican presidential nominee.

After months of dodging and initially signaling he favored a more permissive approach, Trump came out Friday against an abortion rights measure on the Florida ballot that would make the procedure legal up to the point of fetal viability outside the womb, which currently corresponds to about 24 weeks of pregnancy and was the standard under Roe until it was struck down.

Known as Amendment 4, Florida's ballot measure would overturn a ban on abortions in the state after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. The abortion ban was pushed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis as he was running for president and approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature. It is one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, and one that Trump has been eager to distance himself from.

Scrambling to contain the fallout

On Thursday, Trump was asked about Amendment 4 and gave an answer that alarmed some anti-abortion activists. Trump criticized the six-week ban, saying there "has to be more time."

Pressed on how he would vote on the Florida ballot measure, Trump told NBC: "I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks." The comments seemed to imply he would support the ballot measure to overturn the six-week ban.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser immediately put out a statement after Trump's comments saying that supporting Amendment 4 "completely undermines" his past position on abortion. Conservatives already had been growing restless with Trump's efforts to soften his image on abortion, including a recent statement that "my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights."

The Trump campaign worked to contain the fallout on the right from his Thursday comments, releasing a statement that evening insisting Trump hadn't decided how he would vote on Amendment 4. Dannenfelser later put out a second statement saying she spoke to Trump and he was undecided on the Florida ballot measure.

By Friday Trump was decided. Bowing to pressure on the right, he told FOX News "I'll be voting no" on Amendment 4, meaning he would vote to keep his state's ban on abortions after six weeks.

Now it was the left's turn to pounce on Trump.

"Donald Trump just made his position on abortion very clear: He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant," Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent, said in a statement after Trump's Friday comments.

Republican consultant Alex Conant said Trump's difficulties in finding a consistent message on abortion strike at one of his core selling points.

"Trump's appeal is that he's authentic," Conant said. "You know what he thinks. That makes his waffling on abortion questions so odd."

GOP on defensive on abortion after fall of Roe

Abortion has Republicans on the defensive, and it's not just Trump.

A Pew Research Center survey from April found that 63% of U.S. adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Yet with Roe gone, Republicans moved swiftly at the state and national level to restrict abortion. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced federal legislation to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and many conservative states went further.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a group that promotes abortion rights, 14 states have complete bans on abortion, four states ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and two ban it after 12 weeks.

Voters are pushing back.

Ballot measures to protect abortion rights at the state level, like the one in Florida, have been successful everywhere from Kansas to Michigan since Roe was overturned, and have Republicans on edge.

"I think a lot of people are struggling with this ballot initiative," Jamie Miller, a GOP consultant and former executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, said of the Florida measure.

Miller framed the issue as a choice between an abortion ban that many see as too restrictive but "can easily be changed" because it's not in the state constitution, and a ballot measure that would be "extremely hard to change and is much too extreme for Florida."

"I think Trump is grappling with this issue like every other Floridian," he said.

Asked about Trump's difficulties with the abortion question, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that "President Trump's record is clear" without elaborating, and accused Democratic rival Kamala Harris of having an "extreme position" on abortion.

The Harris campaign pointed to comments she made last year that she wants to restore the abortion protections that existed under Roe, saying that's still her position.

Trump's abortion paradox

Trump created a paradox for himself when he followed through on conservatives' long-held desire to overturn Roe. He touts the fall of Roe as a great accomplishment because it sends the abortion question back to the states. Yet many states are adopting highly restrictive new abortion laws that are unpopular with swing voters.

The Alabama Supreme Court even went so far as to declare that embryos created during in vitro fertilization have the same legal protections as children, putting at risk a popular procedure for overcoming infertility. Trump immediately came out in support of IVF and went further this week, saying he wants to mandate that insurance companies pay for the costly procedure, although his campaign has not produced a written proposal or provided any details of how it would work.

Trump has tried to distance himself from more extreme anti-abortion measures without upsetting supporters who are staunchly against the procedure.

Republican consultant Mike Murphy, who worked for multiple GOP presidential candidates and is a vocal critic of Trump, wrote on X that the former president is "actually multiple choice on abortion."

"Say whatever he thinks will scam a vote off ‘em," Murphy added. "The sign of a true con man with zero beliefs."

Equivocating too much can have its own political perils, as the Florida abortion question showed. Faced with angering his base or continue nodding to those who oppose the measure, Trump chose his base.

Opposing Amendment 4 may help keep the Christian conservatives who are pivotal to Trump's coalition from revolting, but it risks tying him more closely to what critics say amounts to a near total abortion ban.

Christian Family Coalition Florida Executive Director Anthony Verdugo downplayed the idea that abortion could be a decisive issue.

"To believe that women voters only care about abortion is stereotypical, sexist and offensive," he said.

Conant said Trump just needs a consistent message when it comes to abortion.

"It might not please everyone," he said. "But at least he'd stop these self-made, unhelpful news cycles."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's abortion contortion act falters on Florida ballot question