The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House speaker says he does not see a national abortion ban next year
Not even if Trump wins, GOP controls House, Senate, he said
By Amy B Wang
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in an interview published Friday that he does not anticipate passing any kind of nationwide abortion ban next year, even if Republicans were to control the White House and both chambers of Congress, citing former president Donald Trump’s recent comments that restrictions should be left to the states.
Johnson’s remarks are in stark contrast to his lengthy record of pushing antiabortion legislation, including several bills just before he became speaker. Republicans have tried to downplay abortion as an election issue before November. In recent elections, the issue has motivated Democratic voters, who fear additional restrictions under Republican rule.
In a wide-ranging interview with Politico, Johnson said he did not expect to put forward legislation on abortion before the election or after it, even if Trump were elected and the GOP controlled the House and Senate.
“President Trump said this is in the states’ purview now. After the Dobbs decision, I think that’s where it is,” Johnson told Politico on Thursday, a day after he survived an attempt by hardright members of his party to oust him from the speakership. Johnson was referring to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the fundamental right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade about 50 years ago.
“Look, I am a lifelong prolifer. I’m a product of a teen pregnancy. And so I believe in the sanctity of human life,” Johnson added. “It’s also an important article of faith for me. But I have 434 colleagues here. All of us have our own philosophical principles that we live by, but you have to have a political consensus.”
Johnson, however, did not categorically rule out the idea of a nationwide abortion ban, suggesting instead that there was “a long way to go” to build political consensus around one.
“Before you can have political consensus on a very contentious issue like this, you have to have cultural consensus,” Johnson told Politico. “And I think there’s a lot of work to do to build a culture of life and educate people on the importance of that and to really live up to the principles of our nation’s birth certificate, which is the declaration that ‘all men are created equal.’ And there’s value in that. But we have a long way to go to build the political consensus here to do anything in that regard.”
Johnson has long described himself as staunchly pro-life and supported restrictions on abortions, earning him an A+ score from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a major antiabortion group.
This year, he was one of 125 House Republicans who co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which defines a “human being” to “include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” The measure would ban nearly all abortions nationwide and has no provisions for processes such as in vitro fertilization.
Last year, Johnson reintroduced legislation aimed at making it illegal to help a minor cross state lines to obtain an abortion without adhering to certain parental consent laws. In 2022, Johnson co-sponsored a bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks at a time when some in the GOP were backing away from nationwide restrictions. Less than two weeks before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Johnson signed on to legislation that would prohibit most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, often at roughly six weeks.
But Johnson’s recent shift away from outright pushing for a national abortion ban follows other Republican lawmakers — and GOP House and Senate hopefuls — who have also fallen in line with Trump’s abortion stance, trying to blunt the political consequences on a controversial issue in an election year.
Though antiabortion advocates have sharply criticized Trump for refusing to endorse a national abortion ban, despite their private lobbying efforts, they have also shifted to strategizing about other ways that abortion could be restricted under a second Trump administration, through executive and agency action.
Meanwhile, President Biden and Democrats have seized on reproductive rights as a key issue on which to attack Republicans and Trump, who has repeatedly taken credit for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who later helped overturn Roe.
Polls have continue to show Biden and Trump, their parties’ respective nominees who will likely face each other again in November, to be locked in a tight race.