Trump tries to unburden himself of abortion albatross
CBC
Abortion may be the biggest threat to Donald Trump's political comeback. Like an albatross he personally helped set loose. Now he's trying to wriggle from its clutches.
The former president has released his long-awaited statement on abortion policy and its evident objective is to defuse this as an election issue.
It consists of two parts: Leave abortion decisions to individual states, and warn those states that adopting a total ban is a political loser.
So even as he took credit for ending the constitutional right to an abortion, and as he applauded the judges he appointed for doing so in 2022, Trump asked his party to be pragmatic.
He urged states to be lenient in cases of rape, or incest, or when an abortion might save the life of the mother, unlike the more severe bans already in effect in several states.
"You must follow your heart on this issue, But remember: You must also win elections," Trump said in a video he released Monday.
The political math behind Trump's position is obvious.
Americans mostly dislike the abortion bans that have been unleashed across the U.S. South and elsewhere in more than a dozen states since the 2022 Supreme Court decision.
Since then, Democrats have been outperforming expectations in byelections, midterm elections and referendums on the issue.
By a 26-point gap, Pew Research found last year that Americans would rather see abortion be legal in all or most cases, than see it be illegal.
In this tight presidential race, Trump would rather have voters focused on his own favoured issues: inflation and the porous southern border.
There's no guarantee his gambit will work.
A plethora of factors will keep pushing abortion back into the news, and onto the president's desk: ongoing court cases, complex federal-state issues, referendums and personal anecdotes.
It took just one day for real-world events to illustrate that point.
