(Headline USA) Days after formally outlining his moderate stance on abortion, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that scrapped the state’s GOP-passed 2022 law banning abortions after 15 weeks in favor of an 1864 law that imposed a near-total ban was too extreme.
Trump expressed confidence that the Republican-controlled state legislature could work with leftist Gov. Katie Hobbs to find a fix.
“It’ll be straightened out and, as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” the former president told supporters and journalists on Wednesday after landing in Atlanta for a fundraiser. “It’ll be straightened out, and I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason and that’ll be taken care of, I think, very quickly.”
Democrats, however, appeared to see an opportunity to inflict political damage in the November election by stoking outrage among single-issue ‘AWFULs’ in order to maintain the swing state’s recent blue winning streak
On Wednesday, Democrats in the state legislature hijacked the legislative session and hectored their GOP counterparts, despite the fact that Republican lawmakers had nothing to do directly with the court ruling.
In fact, several Republicans, following Trump’s lead, have spoken out against the ruling, including current GOP senatorial candidate Kari Lake.
During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom broadcast, former state attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh said the court’s decision seemed oddly timed, since it would do little more than to help mobilize leftists to vote on a referendum supporting abortion that is all but guaranteed to appear on the November ballot.
“The Democrats, in many ways, they’re ecstatic with this decision because they want to use this as a way to drive their voters out to the polls when abortion is gonna be on the ballot as a constitutional amendment,” Hamadeh said.
Trump’s decision to fully articulate his abortion stance, after having long hedged on the divisive issue, caused a stir among staunch pro-lifers.
But supporters argue that it was a political imperative to get in front of the debate, which has played a large part in helping Democrats win the past three election cycles at both the state and federal levels.
As Bannon noted in his interview with Hamadeh, the Left is determined to miscast the GOP as wanting to ban abortion at the federal level—something that many of the party’s more libertarian-aligned backers are not on board with.
Nonetheless, putting the issue in the hands of individual states is a gambit itself, fraught with political peril, since it will only motivate Democrat activists to turn their focus on state elections—including swing states that will be essential to Trump’s reelection and GOP hopes of reclaiming Congress.
Even so, Trump maintained that shifting the discussion away from a moral and religious debate into a legal and political one could help neutralize one of the Democrats’ most effective talking points.
Asked Wednesday whether he would sign a national abortion ban if elected president again, Trump shook his head in response and said “No.”
He did not elaborate on what he thought the level of restrictions and access should be in Arizona or any other state—although he, himself, supports three exceptions: in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk.
Democrats tried to cast Trump as a hypocrite and a flip-flopper due to the fact that he nominated three Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in the overturn of the controversial Roe v. Wade precedent.
In 2022, the conservative-leaning court deemed the 1973 decision to have been unconstitutional since the earlier justices had overstepped their authority, applying judicial activism to create a new law rather than interpret the existing ones.
Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe” and has a track record of “banning abortion every chance he gets,” claimed Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler.
President Joe Biden—despite committing an awkward gaffe by getting his century incorrect at first—landed a blow during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday when was asked for his message to Arizona voters.
“Elect me,” the 81-year-old president said. “I’m in the 20th century … the 21st century. Not back then.”
Trump has said he is proud that the three Supreme Court justices he nominated voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. He supports allowing states to determine their own restrictions, while discouraging them from backing an outright ban due to the political toxicity.
In a stop at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta, Trump was asked whether doctors should be punished for performing abortions, and he said he would let that be up to the states.
Trump also spoke about a Florida law that bans abortions after six weeks, saying that “is probably, maybe, going to change also.”
Last week, Florida’s state Supreme Court upheld a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The ruling also cleared the way for the state to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, through yet another November ballot initiative.
“For 52 years, people have wanted to end Roe v. Wade, to get it back to the states,” Trump said.
“We did that. It was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement,” he continued. “Now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want. It’s the will of the people. So Florida is probably going to change.”
Trump ignored questions about how he plans to vote himself on Florida’s pending state constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion as a right in his home state.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
