Trump says he wouldn’t sign federal abortion ban

Former president also criticizes Ariz. decision two days after saying state should decide

Days after saying that abortion policies should be left to the states, former President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized an Arizona court ruling for upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions and said he would not sign a national abortion ban if he were elected president.

Speaking to reporters on an airport tarmac in Atlanta, Trump said he expected the Arizona law would be “straightened out.” Hours later, Republicans in the state Legislature, which they control, blocked an effort by Democrats to repeal the ban.

Trump also said he expected that a six-week abortion ban in Florida that he has criticized was “probably, maybe going to change.”

Yet even as he suggested his disapproval with the circumstances in both states, Trump defended the position he took in a video statement Monday, when he said that states should weigh in on abortion through legislation.

“It’s the will of the people. This is what I’ve been saying,” Trump said in Atlanta, where he had traveled for a fundraiser. “It’s a perfect system.”

Trump’s comments, coming after his Monday statement, continued months of mixed signals on abortion, an issue that his campaign has worried could hurt him at the polls in November.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — a decision made possible by Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the bench — Democrats have made attacks against Trump on the issue central to their efforts to mobilize voters in November.

During campaign speeches and interviews, Trump often takes credit for appointing the justices and for, in effect, returning the issue of abortion to the states. But the Biden campaign and the Democrats have repeatedly laid the blame for strict state abortion laws on Trump, including the Florida ban, which the former president has called a “terrible mistake.”

Their efforts to tie him to stringent restrictions accelerated after his comments Monday and after the Arizona court ruling Tuesday, which said “all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal,” in accordance with a 160-year-old law.

Michael Tyler, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s campaign, said in a statement after Trump’s comments Wednesday that Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe.”

Democrats have also used the ambiguity left by Trump’s state-focused position to suggest he would be open to signing a federal abortion ban if he won in November, which anti-abortion groups have pushed for.

When he was in the White House, his administration backed a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and penalized anyone who performed the procedure.

But with Roe overturned and Republicans seeming to suffer political consequences in the fallout, Trump has been trying to stake out a position that would animate his conservative base without turning off moderate voters.