Trump favours ‘exceptions’ to abortion ban
Trump, during election, had promised to appoint anti-abortion justices at top US court
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has declared himself “strongly Pro-Life”, days after two US states passed tough new restrictions on abortions, but said exceptions should be made for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
The US president spelled out his position on abortion — set to feature prominently at next year’s election — in his first comments on the hot-button issue since Alabama’s governor signed a near-total ban on the termination of pregnancy.
Pro-life supporters hope that legal battles over the laws will reach the Supreme Court, as they pursue the long-sought conservative goal of overturning its landmark 1973 abortion ruling.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald has joined the Republican push to overturn a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that makes abortion legal, saying he is pro-life but supports exceptions for rape, incest and danger to mother’s life unlike the more stridently conservative sections of his party.
Republican-ruled states have been enacting severely restrictive laws banning abortion from the detection of foetal heartbeat and make no exceptions. “I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions - Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
Disapproving of the extreme positions taken by other Republicans on the issue, he appealed for unity with an eye on the 2020 elections, when the United States will hold its next presidential, congressional and state elections. “We must stick together and Win for Life in 2020. If we are foolish and do not stay UNITED as one, all of our hard fought gains for Life can, and will, rapidly disappear.”
Republicans have felt encouraged to seek the overturn of Roe versus Wade, a Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that guarantees a woman’s right to abortion, by the appointment of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh that has given conservatives a 5-4 majority on the nine-member Supreme Court bench. Strict abortion bills are being pushed in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.