(LifeSiteNews) — Former President and 2024 Republican White House nominee Donald Trump confirmed Friday afternoon that he will be voting against an amendment to enshrine abortion-on-demand in the Florida Constitution, a day after hinting that he would support it.
On Thursday, after months of refusing to share his opinion on the amendment and predicting it would succeed, Trump incurred outrage from already-dismayed pro-lifers when he told NBC News, “I think the six-week is too short, there has to be more time,” referring to the state’s heartbeat-based abortion ban, and that he was “going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
That answer provoked a wave of declarations on social media and relayed to pro-life activists from pro-lifers who would no longer vote or volunteer for Trump, prompting the campaign to quickly issue a statement that “President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”
The clarification gave some hope to pro-lifers, prompting speculation that the former president might not have been aware of the amendment’s details. The next day, he told Fox News, “The Democrats are radical, because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation. All of that stuff is unacceptable. So, I’ll be voting no for that reason.”
#BREAKING: Former President Trump is “no” on Florida’s abortion Amendment 4, saying the amendment is too extreme
“I’ll be voting no.” pic.twitter.com/YoGuIVMR1o
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) August 30, 2024
Amendment 4, the so-called “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” If enacted, it would require abortion to be allowed for any reason before fetal “viability” and render post-“viability” bans effectively meaningless by exempting any abortion that an abortionist claims is for “health” reasons.
The amendment ostensibly says that it “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.” But Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned that “there’s a difference between consent and notification. Notification is after the fact. The consent is obviously a condition precedent. They did that because they know going after parents’ rights is a vulnerability.”
Trump’s opposition to the amendment comes as relief to many pro-lifers, although it does not fully allay discontent with his opposition to federal preborn protections he previously supported, support for mailing abortion pills into pro-life states to be taken without medical oversight, and new proposal to mandate insurance coverage for embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization treatments.
Live Action founder Lila Rose, who has received intense pushback for trying to pressure Trump to re-adopt his former pro-life stances, responded by thanking Trump and noting, “if Trump starts talking like former President Trump who at the March for Life said ‘together, we must protect, cherish, and defend the dignity and sanctity of every human life,’ he may just win this election.”
So far, Trump’s efforts to court abortion moderates have not been successful. Polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH show that Harris continues to maintain the lead that began soon after replacing President Joe Biden as Democrats’ presumptive nominee, both in the national popular vote and the Electoral College.