Former President Donald Trump said he would not sign a federal abortion ban Tuesday night during a presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying he did not think it would be needed. But he also dodged questions about whether he would veto legislation if it landed on his desk.
“I’m not signing a ban,” Trump said in response to Harris’ comment that he would do just that, "and there is no reason to sign the ban because we’ve gotten what everyone wanted.”
Twice, Trump declined to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if it got to his desk, something his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, told NBC News last month he would do.
“Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said about the assertion. “And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”
Trump, as he has in the past, pointed to the fact that a U.S. Supreme Court he shaped with three nominees during his administration overturned Roe v. Wade, sending the issue of abortion back to the states.
Trump has falsely said the contentious ruling was universally praised, which has generally been his response when he has been boxed in on an issue fraught with political peril.
“Democrats, Republicans and everybody else, and every legal scholar, wanted it to be brought back into the states,” Trump said.
Harris responded by saying women in states that cracked down on abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned have faced nightmare scenarios.
“You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who wanted to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and bleeding out in a car in the parking lot?” Harris said.
Social conservatives have pushed Trump to be stronger on the issue, but protections for access to abortions remain broadly popular.
Trump tried to flip the issue on Harris by falsely stating that Democrats support abortion even after a baby is born, an argument Republicans have used across the country to push back against state-level abortion ballot measures, most notably in Florida, where Trump is a resident.
“It’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, OK?” he said. “And that’s not OK with me.”
ABC News’ Linsey Davis, one of the two moderators, clarified after Trump’s comments that “there is no state in which it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
Asked whether Harris supports any restrictions on a woman’s ability to get an abortion, she said she backs the “protections of Roe v. Wade."
To close the part of the debate focused on abortion, Trump directly asked Harris whether she would support abortion in the “eighth month, ninth month, seventh month, right, probably after birth.”
Harris visibly scoffed but did not get a chance for a full response as the debate moved on to a different topic.
Abortion has been a politically dominant issue since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, and throughout the race, it has been a tricky one for Trump to navigate.
Last month, Trump signaled that he would vote against the abortion ballot measure in Florida, but a day later he definitively said he would not support the proposal after there was considerable backlash from social conservatives.
After the pushback, Trump clarified that he opposes Florida’s six-week ban signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran against him in the GOP presidential primaries, but he relied on the false allegation that the Florida measure would allow abortion up until birth as his rationale for opposing it.
“I think six weeks, you need more time than six weeks. I’ve disagreed with that right from the early primaries when I heard about it,” Trump said last month. “At the same time, the Democrats are radical, because nine months is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the ninth month. … So I’ll be voting no for that reason.”
