Former President Donald Trump responded to backlash over his recent comments on abortion in a Tuesday post on Truth Social.
Trump received a letter from the pro-life group Students for Life asking him to “clarify his disappointing comments” after called Florida’s six-week abortion ban was a “terrible mistake,” according to a recent NBC News interview. The six-week ban went into effect after Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed make it law in April.
Trump doubled down on his stance on abortion by touting its role in overturning from the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
“I was able to do something no one thought was possible: end Roe v. Wade,” Trump said on Truth Social. “For 52 years, people talked, spent huge amounts of money, but couldn’t get the job done. I did the job! Thanks to the three great Supreme Court justices I appointed, this issue has been brought back to the United States, where all the jurists, on both sides, felt it should be. Now the Pro Life Community has HUGE NEGOTIATION POWER…”
The former president appointed three conservative justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) who joined the majority in the 6-3 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision returned abortion laws to the state level. (RELATED: ‘The right thing to do’: DeSantis defends six-week abortion ban after Trump called it ‘too harsh’)
Trump too become the first president to speak at the annual March for Life in Washington DC, which peacefully protests abortion on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade.
SBA Pro-Life America and Live Action Pro-Life Leaders said On Monday, the Daily Caller News Foundation said Trump needs to “get on board” and that there is “no reason” he couldn’t support a complete abortion ban.
DeSantis defended the six-week abortion restriction, which prohibits abortion after the fetus’s heartbeat can be detected, following criticism from Trump.
“Protecting a fetus when there is a detectable heartbeat is something that almost, probably, 99% of pro-life advocates support,” DeSantis said at a May 16 press event. “It’s something that other states like Iowa have enacted under Governor Kim Reynolds, and I think as a Florida resident, he didn’t give an answer as to whether you would have signed the Heartbeat Bill like Florida did. It had all the exceptions people talk about, the legislature introduced it, I signed the bill, I was proud to do it. He will not answer whether he would sign it or not.”
Other states, including Georgia and South Carolina, also ban abortion at six weeks. Several states have enacted or maintained outright abortion bans following the Dobbs ruling.