During a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday, the former president said Donald Trump does not rule out withdrawing access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medical abortions.
“You could do things that would …. complement — absolutely — those things are pretty open and humane,” Trump said in response to a question from NBC News about whether he would take steps such as ordering the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access to mifepristone.
“There are a lot of things you can do on a humane basis beyond that,” Trump added, saying that “you also have to give people a voice” on abortion.
Trump’s comments Thursday appear to mark a shift from his stance in June, when the former president said during a CNN debate, “I will not block it.”
In response to clarifying questions about Trump’s position, Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national spokesperson, told NBC News, “As President Trump said, he wants ‘everyone to vote’ on the issue, reiterating his long-held position that he supports states’ rights to make decisions about abortion.”
Leavitt later clarified: “As President Trump said several times during the press conference, the questions being asked were difficult to hear. His position on mifepristone remains the same: the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on the issue and the matter is resolved.”
The idea of directing the FDA to revoke access to mifepristone is a key policy proposal in Project 2025, a 900-plus-page document produced by conservative groups and organized by the Heritage Foundation. The document lays out a governing plan for the next Republican administration.
Trump and his campaign have distanced themselves from Project 2025, even though the initiative has ties to many of Trump’s allies and former advisers.
Also at Thursday’s news conference, Trump was asked how he planned to vote on Florida’s ballot initiative this fall to expand access to abortion. The former president, a Florida resident, did not say how he would vote but hinted at a future announcement on the matter, adding that abortion is not a “big factor anymore.”
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris-Walz’s campaign manager, criticized Trump’s comments in a statement Thursday.
“Women across the country are already suffering from the nightmare that Donald Trump unleashed by overturning Roe v. Wade,” she said. “That reality — women being pushed to the brink of death before they can get the care they need, doctors facing the threat of jail time for doing their jobs, and survivors of rape and incest having to flee their states for basic health care — will only get worse if Donald Trump wins and blocks access to medication abortion.”
The abortion pill mifepristone has been at the center of politics since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
In late 2022, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine filed a lawsuit in Texas seeking to invalidate the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to win the case, preserving nationwide access to abortion pills.
At the time, RNC spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement: “The Supreme Court ruled unanimously 9-0. The matter is resolved.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
