Trump says abortion should be up to US states, avoids backing national ban

Joe Biden says Donald Trump is ‘scrambling’ as reproductive rights are set to be central issue ahead of November election.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the issue of abortion access should be left up to states to decide, eschewing calls from within his party to support a nationwide ban on the procedure in the United States.

In a video posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday, the former US president said he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark legal precedent that had guaranteed abortion rights on the national level for decades.

The US Supreme Court, bolstered by a 6-3 conservative majority that included several Trump appointees, overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022. That put the question of abortion access largely in the hands of individual states to decide, though some anti-abortion activists have pushed for a nationwide ban to be implemented.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said in Monday’s video.

“Many states will be different,” he said, adding that, “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”