Trump says Florida’s six-week abortion ban is ‘too short’ and suggests he will vote to amend it
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Donald Trump opposes Florida’s law that bans abortion at roughly six weeks of pregnancy and appeared to suggest that he will vote for an abortion rights amendment to the state’s constitution this November.
Trump, who is registered to vote in Florida, told NBC News on Thursday that he wants “more weeks.”
If Florida voters approve Amendment 4 on their ballots this fall, the state’s constitution would be amended to state that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
That amendment would effectively overturn the state’s ban on abortion at six weeks of pregnancy – before most people know they are pregnant.
When asked by NBC News how he plans to vote on the amendment, Trump said that “the six week is too short” and “there has to be more time.”
“I’ve told them I want more weeks,” he said. “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
The Republican presidential nominee has failed to present a cohesive platform for reproductive healthcare, and his conflicting statements over the last 25 years have drawn criticism from both abortion rights supporters and his anti-abortion allies.
At one point in 2015, Trump had “five positions on abortion in three days,” according to The Washington Post, while Kamala Harris and his Democratic rivals have warned that another Trump administration with a Republican-controlled Congress could advance a national abortion ban.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, which had affirmed a constitutional right to abortion care. The Trump-aligned Project 2025 document, that is designed to inform his administration, also proposes the application of a long-dormant obscenity law to block abortion drugs from the market.
The Supreme Court dismissed a right-wing legal challenge to the government’s approval of a widely-used abortion drug, and Trump has said that “generally speaking” he does not support banning drugs like mifepristone under the Comstock Act.
“It’s going to be available and it is now,” he recently told CBS News. “And as I know it, the Supreme Court has said: ‘Keep it going the way it is.’ I will enforce and agree with the Supreme Court, but basically they’ve said, keep it the way it is now.”
Last week, he claimed on his Truth Social account that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
Florida is among more than a dozen states that have outlawed all or most abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which Trump supports.
Since earlier this year, Florida’s six-week ban makes it a felony to perform or actively participate in an abortion in the state after roughly six weeks’ gestation, or about two weeks after a missed period.
Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who opposes Amendment 4, said that Trump has “consistently stated that late-term abortions where a baby can feel pain should never be permitted, and he’s always stood up for parents’ rights.”
“Amendment 4 would allow late-term abortions, eliminate parental consent, and open the door to taxpayer-funded abortions. It’s extreme and must be defeated,” she added.
Voters in at least 10 states will vote on abortion rights measures this November, including measures that could enshrine a right to seek abortion care in their states’ constitutions.
At his rally in Michigan on Thursday, Trump also claimed that the government “will pay for or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated” with in vitro fertilization, if he is elected.
“Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide,” Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
“Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” she added. “Because Trump overturned Roe v Wade, IVF is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country.”
