Trump’s Abortion Rights Flip-Flopping Is a Dangerous Opportunity for Pro-Life Extremists

Donald Trump has an abortion problem, and he’s scrambling to fix it. But Trump’s abortion problem isn’t abortion. It’s Trump.

There are a handful of issues that truly animate the former president. Abortion just isn’t one of them. Trump doesn’t seem to be a true believer in any direction–he’s definitely not dedicated to reproductive choice or women’s rights, but he’s also not an anti-abortion firebrand or someone who seems to truly believe that an embryo is a person. He says whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to win the support of whoever he’s courting. But because he’s so disinterested in the issue, he often says all the wrong things.

In 1999, he declared himself “very pro-choice.” As he made his way into conservative politics, he became (or professed to be) pro-life, and in 2016 brought the extremely anti-abortion Mike Pence on as his running mate in large part to assuage the fears of anti-abortion evangelicals. (He won his first time in part due to those voters, and quickly rewarded them by stacking the Supreme Court with judges who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade.)

Now Trump is in a tizzy trying to have it both ways: Maintain the support of this abortion-hostile base—which wants him to go much farther and ban abortion nationwide (and, in some cases, ban other reproductive health tools too)—while also pulling back in the many voters who seem to be fleeing the GOP because of the party’s wildly unpopular abortion policies. So far, he’s done this by making promises he either can’t or has no intention to keep.

He has bragged that he’s the most pro-life president in history while also saying he (probably) wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban; he promised to release his administration’s proposed policy on mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug the anti-abortion movement is trying to criminalize, and then simply never did.

He said that Florida’s six-week abortion ban is too harsh and a “terrible mistake” but, after backlash from abortion opponents, said that he’ll vote to uphold it after all .

And he’s said he’ll make IVF free if he’s elected. How? That’s unclear, since he also says he wants to gut the Affordable Care Act. (Several major anti-abortion groups and leaders, including many who have Trump’s ear, oppose IVF; legislation pushed by anti-abortion groups would accord fertilized eggs personhood rights—and would functionally end the practice of IVF as we know it.)

His incoherence isn’t the result of Trump hiding his true beliefs on abortion rights. It’s Trump not having any true beliefs on abortion rights. But between a desperate, incoherent and notoriously untrustworthy Trump making promises in every direction and a Republican party that has been consistent in its opposition to abortion, I would be more inclined to draw conclusions from, well, everything the GOP has ever done.

Abortion is set to be a decisive issue in this year’s election. For female swing state voters under 45, abortion has moved up to issue number one, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll. And no wonder: This is a cohort of US voters who can get pregnant, and for whom abortion is not just ideological, but potentially life-or-death.

While headlines abound about women putting abortion ahead of economic concerns, for many women, abortion is an economic concern—the grocery bill also gets a lot more expensive when there’s an extra mouth to feed. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term can mean dropping out of school, getting pushed off the professional ladder, scaling back one’s ambitions, and putting more stress on already-stretched households.

There’s very clear evidence that ending unwanted or mistimed pregnancies leaves women better off: Less likely to be on social assistance, less likely to be tethered to abusive men, in better health mentally and physically, better mothers to their existing children (and those existing children do better, too, when their mothers aren’t forced to have additional kids they cannot support), and more likely to literally survive—America’s horrifying maternal mortality rate means that forced pregnancies translate into higher numbers of dead women.

It’s no wonder that the people most affected by abortion bans are the most motivated to vote for candidates who oppose them. But even Americans who don’t make abortion their top issue also see the folly of the GOP stance, and are backing away from Trump because of it. Kamala Harris has a 20-point advantage on abortion over Trump. And a strong majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, including more than 40% of Republicans. The position of the mainstream anti-abortion movement, that abortion should be outlawed in all cases, is held by just 8% of Americans—roughly the same number who believe the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked.

Trump is (probably) running for his final term in office. He has exhibited no desire to groom a successor or expand his MAGA movement; fanfic aside, there is unlikely to be a Trump dynasty or a President Ivanka. He has no loyalty to the broader Republican Party and its future. Once he’s back in the White House, if he’s back in the White House, he will do what he wants on the issues he cares about, and farm the rest out to various lackeys and true believers. Trump does not care about abortion, does not understand abortion policy, does not want to deal with abortion; as a result, he seems vastly unlikely to have a strong hand in setting abortion policy for his administration. Many around him do care about abortion, are almost universally extremely hostile to abortion rights. They see a Trump presidency as a chance to curtail those rights even further.

Voters should assess this reality and ask themselves whether they really believe Trump will stand his ground on abortion rights–that is, if anyone can figure out what ground Trump stands on at all.