Trump’s abortion stance seems to please no one. But for once, it’s not his fault | Opinion

Former President Donald Trump’s big policy announcement about his abortion stance was laced with irony.

Trump declared Monday that he would not support a federal ban on the procedure and that states should enact their own various policies. That was the heart of the Republican position for years while the Roe v. Wade decision and other Supreme Court rulings protected access to abortion early in pregnancy.

Pro-lifers were also working for a day when most abortion would be eliminated, perhaps both practically and legally. But GOP politicians had the luxury of focusing on the botched constitutional law unleashed by Roe and theorizing what should happen if it were overturned.

It’s no longer conjecture, thanks largely to Trump’s high-court appointments. And it risks getting Republicans blown out in elections, or at least ending up with permissive abortion policy in more states than they ever imagined.

There’s been another crucial, longer-term change. Polarization and nationalization define politics now. It’s not enough for progressives to have generous abortion access in states such as California and New York. They want to change Texas’ strict policy, even if they never set foot here. Many conservatives similarly want a federal law that would realize their dream of diminishing abortion forever.

Trump, whether he realized it or not, stumbled back into the very thing that would ease so much of the tension in politics: federalism. Pour energy into making policy that fits our states or communities rather than raging toward those who aren’t our neighbors.

He’s politically savvy enough to understand that debating a one-size-fits-all federal policy might hurt Republicans this November, and thus damage his own political prospects (which is probably his primary motivation).

Many Republicans want restrictions on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. If we had to craft a national compromise right now, that would make sense. In the two years since the court overturned Roe, voters in blue, red and swing states have made clear that they want to preserve the right to early-term abortions.

But most find the procedure repellent. Majorities would probably accept limits on late-term procedures, which we’re told are rare but still occur by the thousands and strike reasonable people as gruesome.

Which position — let the states decide or push the 15-week ban — is politically most viable? We don’t know, because while Republicans did decades of work to build opposition to abortion and Roe, they weren’t ready for what happened next. They didn’t notice, apparently, that a majority of Americans hold a contradiction in their heads: Abortion is not ideal, but it is sometimes the preferable option.

So, it’s a mix of policies around the country. When it’s directly on the ballot, the evidence is clear: Voters will support abortion rights. Whether those voters will punish Republicans on the same ballot remains to be seen, but you don’t have to squint to see that those turning out primarily to protect abortion rights will vote mostly Democratic.

Trump perhaps believes he is settling the issue as much as possible for now, especially by taking a strong stance in favor of in vitro fertilization, the focus of half of his statement Monday. Maybe his instincts for keeping doors open lead him to choose the federalist path now and leave himself room to pivot later.

In the meantime, each state will have its battles. Republicans won the decades-long legal fight; now, they have to work harder to win the argument. Seeking total abortion bans in all but the most conservative states won’t do it. Arguing with parents who face dangerous pregnancies that probably aren’t viable won’t do it.

In a conservative bubble, Kate Cox, the woman who famously sued Texas to seek to terminate a fetus with a usually fatal abnormality, had no case because her life wasn’t endangered and sometimes the diagnosis of the condition, Trisomy 18, is wrong. Outside that bubble, though, it’s callous to dismiss Cox’s argument that her future fertility was worth risking and that she should just hope for a statistically unlikely miracle.

Republicans have to acknowledge that hard cases are hard. They have to talk about the importance of honoring life. And they have to hit progressives much harder for their journey, in 30 short years, from Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” to “shout your abortion” and an embrace of policies that would leave no practical limits on terminating a life.

Trump had few good options. At least by embracing federalism, he nodded toward the idea that Americans will have to live and let live in a way they did in decades past, when news of what people and state governments thousands of miles away wasn’t beamed directly to their screens.

Whether he and his party can win the argument remains to be seen.

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