It’s a theme TPM has tackled repeatedly this campaign cycle — elevating all the ways in which Donald Trump, his campaign, his MAGA allies in Congress and the Republican Party as a whole have repeatedly flailed in their attempts to appear as though they’re softening their stance on abortion — due to how electorally unpopular red-state bans have been — without alienating their staunchly anti-abortion religious right base.
The result has been a presidential candidate who has been a blundering mess on perhaps the single most important policy issue this cycle, instead of capitalizing on the most significant (most infamous) legacy of his one-term presidency: stacking the Supreme Court with enough right-wing conservatives to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Trump has, for almost two years now, refused to engage seriously on reproductive rights, or address his party’s extreme anti-abortion positions and aspirations for a federal abortion ban. Anytime he’s questioned on the issue, he’s shrugged it off, claiming he’s a big believer in exceptions — something he, conveniently, only started talking about after the 2022 midterms were disastrous for Republicans — and arguing that he actually fixed the issue by sending it back to the states.
The attempts at bamboozling voters into thinking he’s moderated his stance took their most dramatic turn in the form of his newfound obsession with IVF — the fertility treatment put in the crosshairs by the Dobbs ruling that’s been further threatened by the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling this spring. That court decision, which ruled in favor of fetal personhood ideology and found that embryos are “babies,” set off a firestorm of concerns about the future of IVF in Alabama and in red states across the country. Clinics were shuttered and the state’s Republican legislature was forced to pass a measure that would protect access in the state.
This newfound rush to publicly declare support for the popular fertility treatment flies in the face of Trump’s own beliefs and the party’s recent history.
Republicans have long pushed legislation that would enshrine fetal personhood at the state level and have repeatedly, in just the past year alone, fought Democrats’ attempts to pass federal IVF protections in Congress. But all that be damned, says Trump, who has, somehow, decided to unironically coin himself the “father of IVF” as some sort of insulting, creepy consolation prize for putting the procedure in harm’s way in the first place.
All that is to say, Trump waited until Election Day to weigh in honestly on the issue:
“Just stop talking about that,” Trump told reporters after being asked for a second time how he voted on Florida’s abortion rights amendment.
— Lalee Ibssa (@LaleeIbssa) November 5, 2024
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