Former President Donald Trump is suggesting he would be open to supporting a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is endangered.
In a radio interview Tuesday with Sid Rosenberg on WABC, Trump weighed in on what he thinks would be an appropriate limit on the procedure after he touted the Supreme Court’s overturning in 2022 of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling — which came after he appointed three conservative justices to the court.
“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that, and it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable,” he said. “But people are really — even hard-liners are agreeing — seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”
Trump said that he would make an announcement on what specific limit on abortion he would support “at the appropriate time” before going on to say that it should be left to the states to decide.
“The issue of abortion, we brought it back to the states,” Trump said, referring to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. “And everybody agrees, you’ve heard this for years, all the legal scholars on both sides agree, it’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
In response to Trump’s remarks, the Biden campaign shared a statement from Amanda Zurawski, a woman who is suing Texas over its abortion ban. Zurawski said she nearly died in 2022 after doctors initially declined to perform an abortion as she suffered severe complications 18 weeks into her pregnancy. Doctors eventually gave her an abortion when her health deteriorated.
“My family has been forever altered by the nightmare that Donald Trump created by overturning Roe. I nearly died because my doctor could not give me the care I needed — and my ability to have children in the future has been forever compromised by the damage that was caused,” she said.
The former president's remarks provide the clearest indication yet of what limits to abortion rights he would potentially support.
The New York Times reported last month that Trump privately told his advisers that he favors a ban after 16 weeks of pregnancy, which would include exceptions in cases of rape and incest and if a woman’s life is in danger.
A source familiar with conversations told NBC News at the time that Trump had raised the possibility of supporting a 16-week abortion ban in discussions with his advisers. However, a separate source stressed that the former president did not take a stance on a federal abortion ban.
The Trump campaign had pushed back on the reporting, calling it “fake news.”
“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement last month. “Joe Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress is on the record supporting radical on-demand abortion.”
