Opinion: The Dangerous Opportunity in Donald Trump’s Abortion Flip-Flopping
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.)