Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed former President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his new position on abortion as Republicans continued to squabble over the lightning rod issue and another battleground state enacted a near-total ban.
On a day that Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld a century-old total ban on abortion, Schumer (D-N.Y.) called out Trump for his hard-to-pin-down stance on reproductive rights and suggested Democrats would continue to lean hard on the issue to win at the ballot box in November.
“Should former President Trump return to office, he will continue to support a federal abortion ban and continue to erode women’s rights,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
“After all, this is the Donald Trump who said: Women who seek reproductive care should be punished,” he added.
Schumer mocked Trump for flip-flopping on the issue over the years and even the past few months when he mused about backing a 15-week national ban.
“Let’s wait a few weeks and see what his new position will be,” Schumer said.
Democrats pointed to the explosive Arizona decision as precisely the danger of Trump’s position, with President Biden’s reelection campaign saying it was “made possible by Trump.”
“This ruling is a result of extreme Republican elected officials,” Biden said.
A day after Trump put out a video suggesting abortion restrictions should be left to the states, Republicans continued to snipe over whether that stance makes moral or political sense.
Sen. Lindsey Graham reiterated his support for a 15-week national abortion ban, a position Trump declined to endorse for now.
“The states’ rights approach, to me, you sort of abandon your position on late-term abortion [in blue states]. It does bother me what happens in California and New York,” Graham told CNN on Tuesday.
Trump lashed out at Graham (R-S.C.) and some prominent abortion opponents for not getting in line behind his position, which he hoped would ease the fierce political headwinds the GOP is facing going into the November elections.
He even said Graham’s failure to toe the line could cost Republicans the Congress and “even the presidency,” effectively admitting he fears losing to Biden.
Trump campaign advisers say the former president privately considers abortion to be a political “loser” and hopes it plays as small a role as possible in his White House rematch with Biden.
That appears to be wishful thinking as Democrats and abortion-rights activists continue to hit him hard on the issue. They blame Trump for opening the door to near-total abortion bans in most Republican states as well as the ongoing push to ban medication abortion.
The Biden campaign put out a new ad depicting a Texas woman who nearly died and may never be able to have children again after she was denied care for a stillborn child under the Lone Star State’s six-week abortion ban.
“Donald Trump did this,” reads the ad’s final line.
Trump once said he was “strongly pro-choice” but switched to the “pro-life” side when he entered Republican politics. He has floated various stances on the issue over the years, while consistently bragging that he gave conservatives what they long considered the Holy Grail by reversing Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide for 50 years.
The former president will likely face far more questions about abortion as the election cycle heats up.
Arizona now joins Trump’s home state of Florida as the latest to enact a near-total ban on abortion.
Sunshine State voters will get the chance to vote on a constitutional amendment that would effectively restore the protections provided by Roe v. Wade and overturn the ban. Arizona activists are hoping to get a similar measure on the November ballot.
Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the Florida referendum, which requires 60% support to pass. That’s about the same share of voters who generally support abortion rights, polls say.
