A change of position on medical abortion?

WASHINGTON Former President Trump doesn't want to talk much about abortion in his 2024 presidential campaign. But as his muddled message about mifepristone showed Thursday, Democrats are willing to seize any opportunity he presents to keep reproductive rights in the national spotlight.

At a lengthy press conference at Mar-a-Lago, a reporter asked the Republican presidential candidate whether he would ask the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access to the abortion pill mifepristone if he were elected to a second term. While Trump’s response was difficult to interpret, he did not dismiss the idea.

There are things that could be done that would be complementary. Absolutely. These things are quite open and humane, he said. But you have to be able to vote, and all I want to do is give everyone the right to vote.

Trump had already said during the June 27 debate that he supported the Supreme Court’s decision to allow telemedicine prescriptions of mifepristone and that he would not seek a nationwide abortion ban. In light of his more vague position Thursday, Democrats and reproductive rights advocates have argued that a second Trump administration could restrict abortion access in multiple ways, beyond a national ban that many Republicans have already deemed politically unworkable.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign was quick to post excerpts of Trump's latest response to mifepristone on social media platforms and return to the Project 2025 narrative calling for a national abortion ban that Trump has desperately sought to distance himself from in recent weeks.

Today, Donald Trump made clear what his Project 2025 allies have been saying for months: If elected, he will use his power and every tool of the federal government to eliminate access to medication abortion, effectively banning abortion nationwide in all 50 states, Harris campaign manager Julie Chvez Rodriguez said in a statement.

“We talk a lot about the abortion ban, and we can talk about it because I’m sure he would sign it if it were possible,” said Dara Kass, an emergency physician and professor at Columbia University Medical Center. “But he’s going to do a lot of things before that’s possible.”

Other Democrats were quick to criticize Trump's response.

Donald Trump is incapable of forming complete sentences, but the answer should be simple. “I support access to medication abortion,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on X.

In 2000, the FDA approved mifepristone for abortions up to seven weeks of pregnancy and later expanded the approval to 10 weeks. During the coronavirus pandemic, the agency allowed the pill to be prescribed via telemedicine. Conservative Christian groups challenged the approval, and the FDA eased restrictions in a case that the Supreme Court sent back to lower courts this spring.

According to recent data from the Society of Family Planning, telemedicine abortions increased in the wake of Roes in 2022. Telemedicine prescriptions accounted for one-fifth of abortions in the first quarter of 2024, a 5% increase from the period before the Supreme Court decision.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on its statement or its position on access to mifepristone.

The former president also appeared eager to downplay the impact that abortion rights could have on the election during his news conference, even as Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, rally voters on the campaign trail around her evolving and sometimes fuzzy position.

On Thursday, Trump said the issue of abortion rights was now much less important, since states were now responsible for setting policies. Abortion has become a much smaller issue. I think it will actually be a very minor issue, he insisted at Mar-a-Lago.

Abortion access is on the November ballot in at least five states, and advocates in six others are also projecting to win votes. Trump has even acknowledged that a ballot initiative in Florida, his home state since 2021, would run a bit more liberally than people thought. The ballot initiative would protect abortion up to the point of fetal viability, overturning a six-week ban.

Trump still maintains that the Roe decision is universally popular, despite polls suggesting that most Americans oppose the Supreme Court's 2022 decision.

However, his softening of his position in recent months, insisting he would leave abortion policy to states and forgo a national ban, has also angered anti-abortion conservatives.

Frustrations flared again last month, when J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate and a staunch opponent of abortion, told NBC that he, too, supported the Supreme Court’s decision not to change access to mifepristone. Some accused Trump and Vance of abandoning a longstanding Republican Party principle, while others acknowledged that it would be a losing issue in the 2024 election.

“I am confident that Senator Vance was responding to a question about a total ban that he believes is politically impossible at this time,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement to STAT at the time. “I am also confident that he believes that physicians should be involved in the administration of these dangerous drugs and that states should have the right to regulate them.”

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