It wasn’t so long ago that many anti-abortion advocates were calling Trump the most pro-life president in history. After all, he was three for three in nominating anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court — something no other Republican president could boast. And those three justices came through last year by overturning Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
Trump, Williams notes, “also put Texas judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk on the federal bench. He is the judge who suspended use of an abortion pill, safely used for 20 years.”
But in part because of the court’s Roe decision, abortion has become a political loser for Republicans, writes Williams, and Trump seems to have noticed. “Trump, looking beyond the primaries, surely knows that any Republican backing a nationwide ban on abortion will be badly wounded going into the general election.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s “rivals see an opening. They are betting they can beat Trump by grabbing the label of the most anti-abortion candidate in the race,” Williams writes.
Trump has also remained mum on state-level efforts to limit the procedure, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signing of a six-week ban in Florida.
Williams concludes that “if the GOP wants to avoid a wipeout in the 2024 elections, they will have to try the impossible and do all they can to hide their anti-abortion agenda.”
“At best they can follow Trump’s strategy — say nothing.”
Read the op-ed at TheHill.com.
