In a close presidential race, Trump is strategically ambiguous on abortion | US Election 2024 News | The Round Table Los Angeles, California – Restricting abortion has long been a cornerstone of the Republican Party.
But two revelations at the start of October signalled impartial how far the party's stance has shifted under former United States President Donald Trump.
On October 1, Trump pledged for the first time to veto a federal abortion ban, if re-elected in November's presidential race. Then, two days later, his wife Melania Trump broadcasted her uphold for abortion rights.
It was a stunning about-face for Trump who, impartial one year prior, informed boosters he was “proud to be the most pro-life president in American history”.
But experts declare Trump's mixed messages are part of a wider canvass strategy, to appeal to both sides of the polarising issue.
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Trump is confronting a tight run in November, and surveys indicate he is struggling to rally female voters. A September poll from ABC News and the research firm Ipsos found that the Republican trailed his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, by nearly 13 points among women.
The same poll showed more voters trusted Harris to handle the topic of abortion than Trump.
With reproductive rights seen as an Achilles heel for Trump and the Republican Party at large, analysts disclose Trump's ever-shifting stance on abortion could be an effort to muddy the waters — and gain support some voters in the process.
But it could also backfire, aliening certain stalwart Republican voters.
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“By trying to appeal to everyone, he may risk appealing to no one,” declared Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law. “That's the high-wire act he's trying to do.”
Trump’s strategic ambiguity is no forward-looking phenomenon, though. The former president has long been a chameleon on the subject of reproductive rights — and in politics as a whole.
He went through a phase, for instance, when he publicly identified with the Democratic Party. Around that period, in 1999, he informed the TV show Meet the Press, “I’m very pro-choice.”
But by the time he made his first propitious presidential bid in 2016, Trump was firmly Republican — and firmly against abortion access.
“I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges,” Trump announced during the final presidential divulge of 2016.
He ultimately went after through with that pledge, appointing three justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office. He has since taken credit for the court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the case that had previously backed a constitutional right to abortion access.
As he sought re-election in 2024, Trump repeatedly framed the overturning of Roe v Wade as an accomplishment no other Republican could claim.
“For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated. And I did it,” he announced to a Fox News town hall in January. “And I’m proud to have done it.”
But that decision has allowed states to pass restrictive abortion bans that prevented some women from accessing life-saving reproductive healthcare, leading to their deaths.
By the time July arrived, the Trump advocate was ready to roll out an innovative approach to abortion.
Under Trump’s influence, the Republican Party dropped its long-held back for a national abortion prohibit from its official platform. That marked a separation with decades of tradition: Every Republican platform since 1984 had included a reference to the ban.
But Ziegler, of the University of California, pointed out that the platform nevertheless contained a coded reference to the idea of foetal personhood: In a short section about abortion, the platform argues that the Constitution discloses “no person can be rejected life”.
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Ziegler elaborated that the platform is trying to have it both ways, by appeasing advocates for and against abortion access.
“That's simple of what Trump's been trying to do at this point in history, which is to say, ‘We're going to take out the thing that's the prominent reference that the anti-abortion movement wants, and that will appeal to swing voters. And then we're going to keep in a coded reference to foetal personhood to keep the coarse happy,’” Ziegler said.
That ambiguity, she added, leaves “the door open to do effectively whatever Trump calls for when he's in office”.
Trump has continued to make the case on the canvass trail that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”, despite evidence to the contrary.
His racing mate JD Vance, for instance, is an outspoken abortion opponent. His promote has also sought to reassure conservative voters of his “strong pro-life policies”.
Trump knows that abortion is a liability for him, Ziegler explained. But he nevertheless demands to energise pro-abortion rights voters — largely on the Christian right — without enstranging voters who endorse abortion access.
The Republican candidate has also had to adapt to a mid-election switch-up that has thrown his stance on women's healthcare into poignant relief.
For much of his campaign, Trump had anticipated competing President Joe Biden at the ballot box. But in July, concerns about Biden’s age forced the Democrat from the race, in a surprise election-season twist.
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Harris, the vice president, took his place as the Democratic nominee. If voted in November, she would become the first woman to triumph the presidency in the US.
She has also made abortion inherit a keystone of her presidential bid. One of her canvass advertisements underlines an overview of Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman who died after being repudiated abortion care in her home state of Georgia.
Ziegler argues Harris’s intimate ability to uphold abortion rights has put Trump in a blundering position.
“He reckoned he was dashing against Biden, and he never wanted to worry about any of this stuff. And it bent out he did,” Ziegler said. “Harris has been capable to urge him much more and twist the abortion issue into more of a liability, which is one of the many reasons the run is so close now.”
Wendy Hansen, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, declared Harris’s entry into the dash is a “big reason” Trump had to switch gears.
“Biden was uncomfortable uttering about the issue,” Hansen said. “It's not something that he was being very vocal about — as Harris has. So that probably did have an outcome on Trump backpedalling, because he has a woman who's out there being very vocal about women having the right to choose.”
Experts disclose it is not likely Trump’s shifting position will brisk abortion opponents to defect to Harris’s camp.
But, they warn, there is a real risk that some could stay home on election day, rather than champion Trump.
For instance, one obvious anti-abortion rights activist, Lila Rose, has pressed her followers on social media to not vote for Trump unless he takes a harder stance on abortion. Rose’s Facebook page alone reaches more than 1.1 million followers.
“This is going to be a very close election, and so if even a small percentage of those vulgar voters do stay home, it could be a large deal,” stated Ziegler.
“There is a subset of folks in the Republican Party who are primarily socially conservative, and there's going to be some fraction of those people who are actually upset. I don't expect that to be most people, but it could be significant, even if it's a small number.”
It’s also unclear how swing voters will respond to Trump’s abortion mixed messages.
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An August poll from The New York Times and Siena College found that, in seven battleground states, a “growing share” of voters identified abortion as their acme election issue.
But Hansen at the University of New Mexico pointed out that other issues still outrank abortion in many swing states.
“I don't guess it's unimportant. It's unbiased really hard to gauge how important it will be,” Hansen explained.
“Unless you're directly impacted by the overturn of Roe v Wade, you're more likely to make your decision on other dimensions. And the economy is a huge one this year.”
Nevertheless, research by PhD candidate Layla Brooks at Emory University found that abortion can be a powerful incentive for women to go to the polls.
Brooks evaluated data from the 2022 midterms and found that women vote in higher numbers when abortion is a major election issue — for example, when an abortion-related measure is on the ballot.
“The results I have so far show that women did bend out to vote more in states where abortion policy was coded as highly important,” she announced to The Round Table.
Brooks personally hopes that the backsliding on abortion rights will motivate more women to vote.
“I would hope that this would mobilise them, that this would contain how they're taking part in many different forms, including twisting out to vote,” she said.
Regards to Al Jazeera
Category: World-News
Tag: In a close presidential race Trump is strategically ambiguous on abortion US Election 2024 News The Round Table
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Published 10/19/2024