Abortion was discussed early Thursday night in CNN’s presidential debate Donald Trump repeating his enigmatic claim that “everyone” wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The topic came up when debate moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper asked the former president whether he would block access to medication abortion, something the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to protect. Trump responded that he respected the court’s decision but quickly pivoted to what has become his favorite claim.
“Everybody, without exception — Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives — everybody wanted it,” Trump said of the court that overturned the landmark abortion rights ruling two years ago, allowing states to impose severe restrictions on the procedure.
“Every legal scholar in the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the states,” Trump insisted. That is false.
Over the past two years, it has become clear that abortion is a losing issue for Republicans, making it a difficult topic for Trump to navigate. In May insisted that abortion rights are “not a big deal” and that it should be “largely taken off the table because individual states are doing what they are doing.”
In fact, poll shows that 1 in 6 women of childbearing age say abortion is the single most important issue on their ballot this year, and about half of women believe this year’s election will have a “major impact” on access to abortion. About half of all voters say abortion is a “very important issue.”
Faced with pressure to clarify his position on what types of abortion measures he would support, Trump did so vague comments in April that people should “do what is good for our country.” A few days later he offered a slightly clearer position, saying that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected. But he said nothing about the possibility of a backdoor plan to ban the distribution of abortion pills by mail.
Trump and Biden also got into a heated argument over restrictions on abortion rights after a certain number of weeks of pregnancy.
“The idea that the Founding Fathers wanted politicians to be the ones making decisions about this is ridiculous,” Biden said of abortion restrictions. “A doctor should be making those decisions.”
Trump fired back: “So that means he can take the baby’s life in the ninth month and even after birth. … He is willing to rip the baby out of the womb and kill the baby.”
Late-pregnancy abortions are extremely rare. It is illegal in every state to kill a baby after it is born.
“That’s simply not true. Roe v. Wade does not provide for that,” Biden said, adding that Democrats are “not for late-stage abortion.”
