Former President Donald Trump claimed abortion is “largely off the table” and people are “very happy” that he helped end Roe v. Wade in an interview taped on the eve of a key Supreme Court hearing on the issue.
Trump recently released a widely covered announcement in which he took great pains to convey that his actions led to the end of Roe v. Wade, while also trying to insist the issue is now no longer relevant to national politics because it’s been “returned to the states.”
But the end of Roe has placed abortion on the ballot in many states this November, and resulted in Supreme Court cases like the one being heard Wednesday over emergency abortion care.
Trump did an interview with Walter Perez of Philadelphia’s WPVI 6ABC that was taped Tuesday, just 24 hours before that hearing, in which he insisted the issue of abortion is “off the table” and “people are very happy” about it:
WALTER PEREZ: The Biden camp seems focused a lot of its message around the abortion issue and the passage of the infrastructure deal. What is your counter message regarding those issues?
DONALD TRUMP: On the abortion thing, and it’s a very simple situation that has now been worked out. For 52 years they’ve been trying to get it back to the states. I was able to get it back to the states. Now all of the states are making their decision. Pennsylvania is making its decision. They’re all making their decision.
And this is what people have wanted. It’s taken the complexity out of it. It’s very simple. It’s now states. The people are voting. And they’re voting all over the country. Sometimes it’s conservative. Sometimes it’s not conservative. But the abortion issue is taken – has been really, largely taken off the table, because when we did this, we did what both sides, everybody, wanted.
Legal scholars want it. Everybody. They wanted to take abortion out of the federal system and put it into the states, and we were able to do that when we terminated Roe v. Wade.
Now, when you look at it and you look at what’s happening all over the country now, states are voting. Ohio just voted. All different, by the way. It’s tailor made, and it’s really working out well for people, and they’re very, very happy. Every legal scholar felt, and felt for a long time, for 53 years they’ve been trying to do it. It was wrong being in the federal government. Now it’s in the states. Your state’s going to vote. They’re all going to vote. And it’s really taken it largely out of play.
Biden-Harris 2024 campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa released the following statement after Trump’s interview:
“Donald Trump is wrong. Abortion bans are not ‘an incredible thing.’ People are not ‘happy.’
“Because of Donald Trump, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to wait until they are at the brink of death before receiving the care they need. Child rape victims have to leave their states to get health care. A law from before women had the right to vote is set to strip women of their basic rights. Donald Trump is proud that he killed Roe and ripped away women’s freedom.
“Today, in Florida, President Biden offered a different vision for America, where women’s freedoms are protected, their bodies respected, and their choices left to them, their families, and their doctors.”
Watch above via Philadelphia’s WPVI 6ABC.
