Democratic President Joe Biden responded online after former Republican President Donald Trump pandered to his pro-forced birth base in a recent TIME magazine interview.
Taking the "it worked for slavery and segregation" states' rights stance, Trump said he would do nothing to intervene if states decided to identify and monitor all pregnancies in their state and investigate, prosecute and punish people when a pregnancy didn't end in a live birth.
The Biden/Harris rapid response X account first alerted people to Trump’s latest abortion stance.
Sharing an excerpt from the TIME interview, Biden/Harris HQ captioned the post:
"Trump says he wants to let states 'monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion'."
President Biden’s X account shared the post three hours later, captioned:
"This is reprehensible."
"Donald Trump doesn’t trust women. I do."
Trump's TIME interview—titled "How Far Trump Would Go?"—was published Tuesday morning.
In it, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential candidate took another stab at spinning his stance on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. Like many Republican politicians banking on the votes of Christian nationalists, Trump discovered promoting a national abortion ban and restrictions on access to birth control wasn't appealing to the majority of voters.
But when GOP strategists tried to pivot their messaging, they alienated their very vocal pro-forced birth supporters.
Now they're turning to the stance politicians historically took on issues like Indigenous genocide, slavery, voting rights, segregation, women's equality, and basic human rights for LGBTQ+ people: "not it."
Rather than take a position, they push responsibility onto individual states.
Then they figuratively shrug as marginalized communities are persecuted and say it's not their problem.
When TIME correspondent Eric Cortellessa asked:
"Do you think states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban?"
Trump replied:
"I think they might do that. You'll have to speak to the individual states."
Cortellessa followed up by asking whether Trump would be comfortable with states prosecuting people who have abortions beyond the point permitted by law. Trump again claimed he'd have no responsibility for the health, safety and human rights of Americans.
The Republican presidential frontrunner said:
"It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions."
In Trump’s America, states can do whatever they want, including monitoring pregnancies to ensure every pregnancy ends with a live baby or an explanation that satisfies the state agency in charge of monitoring.
And Trump has already doubled down on his new "no stance" stance.
Not everyone agrees with Trump's "not my problem" approach to the presidency.
His handlers' belief that it would shield him from liberal or conservative criticism was misguided.
In response to the TIME interview, Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju stated:
"There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump will choose anti-abortion extremists and their horrifying agenda over American families every single chance he gets, and this new interview proves that he will ban abortion in all 50 states."
"It’s imperative that we double down on our mission to reelect the Biden-Harris ticket and deliver Congressional majorities to lock our right to abortion care into federal law."
The 2024 presidential election is about 188 days away according to the 270 to Win countdown clock.
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