Trump’s Approach to Florida’s High-Stakes Abortion Amendment: Don’t Ask. Won’t Tell.
Trump’s Approach to Florida’s High-Stakes Abortion Amendment: Don’t Ask. Won’t Tell.
He knows abortion is a political minefield for him. The question is, can he avoid getting blown up?
TWENTY DAYS AGO, DONALD TRUMP promised he would soon discuss how he’ll vote on Florida’s abortion rights initiative. But a number of evangelical leaders and advisers think he should just shut up about it.
Poll after poll has shown abortion is a loser of an issue for Trump and Republicans in general. And with a proposed amendment on the ballot in Florida this November that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, he’s gone to great lengths to avoid talking about it—or giving too many specifics. For some of the activists hoping to see the amendment defeated, that’s just fine.
“The biggest thing we need from him is to win,” said Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a Trump presidential campaign adviser in 2016 and 2020 who is still in contact with Trump’s presidential campaign about the proposed Florida amendment.
“If he said nothing about abortion from now until Election Day, it wouldn’t bother me simply because we do know where he stands,” Pavone, a prominent activist and laicized priest who opposes the Florida initiative, told The Bulwark. “I believe he’s pro-life. He’s proven that. So I don’t need him to give pro-life speeches. It’s my job to articulate pro-life principles and it’s his job to get elected and govern.”
That activists are hoping for silence from Trump (as opposed to alliance) underscores just how far the politics of abortion have shifted. Some anti-abortion leaders share Pavone’s opinion that it is fine—and maybe even wise—for Trump to sit out the Florida debate. But in interviews with a dozen other top social conservative leaders and advisers to Trump, others said they believed the former president was selling out the movement by choosing not to engage on Florida’s initiative, called Amendment 4.
As for Trump, abortion continues to be a hornet’s nest. The ex-president has repeatedly expressed pride in the role he played in overturning Roe v. Wade. But he has also pledged to veto any new abortion restrictions, vowed not to restrict access to abortion pills if re-elected, and his campaign now won’t say if he would veto a federal bill protecting abortion rights.
While some activists, such as Pavone, are willing to abide Trump’s silence, evolving statements, and shifting rhetoric (Trump recently pledged to be a champion of “reproductive rights”), they have proved too much for others.
“Due to their increasingly pro-abortion position, Trump/Vance is stretching the lesser of two evils voting strategy to an untenable position,” anti-abortion activist Lila Rose said this week. “Without some indication that they will work to make our nation a safer place for preborn children, they are making it impossible for pro-life voters to support them. Being less passionate about killing babies then Harris/Walz is not enough.”
One Trump campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said activists like Rose are being unrealistic about modern campaign realities.
“She should start up a new group called CLA: The Coalition to Lose on Abortion,” the adviser said.
Trump advisers have indicated that he is privately opposed to Amendment 4—which was drafted by a coalition of liberal groups led by Planned Parenthood—on grounds that it’s too permissive. But they also admit they have no idea whether and when Trump will talk about it, despite the ex-president saying in an August 8 press conference that he would give his position “in the near future.”
Many in Trump’s orbit see the amendment as an unwelcome trap that keeps him on the defensive against Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made support for legal abortion an organizing principle of her campaign. If there’s any support for Amendment 4 in Trump’s campaign, no one is copping to it. And longtime Trump advisers like Michael R. Caputo,1 a theology student at Ave Maria University in Florida, have made their opposition to Amendment 4 clear while attacking activists like Rose who criticize the candidate.
“Why isn’t Lila actually WORKING to defeat pro-abortion actual laws and referenda in the states? Why isn’t she in Florida to FIGHT Amendment 4?” Caputo posted Tuesday morning. “What does she do besides YAPPING on social media and raising and spending millions?How much do you PAY yourself @LilaGraceRose?”
Rose didn’t respond.
WHAT IS CLEAR ABOUT TRUMP’S VIEWS on abortion in Florida is that he believes the state’s existing six-week abortion ban is “too harsh,” a statement he made to me last year after I repeatedly tried to pin him down on where he stands.
Anti-abortion activists continued to embrace Trump even after he came out against that ban. That many remain by his side as he adopts a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach on Amendment 4 suggests they are smarting from political setbacks endured in the two years since Roe was overturned. Anti-abortion activists watched voters across the country protect abortion rights and reject restrictive initiatives in both red and blue states since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision. The overturning of Roe also energized Democrats and played a role in Republican underperformance in that year’s midterm elections.
That spooked Trump so badly he began privately referring to abortion as “the A-word.”
For more than a year, Trump has walked a tightrope, boasting of helping repeal Roe while giving few specifics beyond saying that he opposes late-term abortions, backs abortion exceptions (in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother), and believes the issue should be decided at the state level.
Of the ten states voting on abortion rights this November, Florida is unique because it’s Trump’s adopted home state. As a proposed state constitutional amendment, the initiative needs 60 percent voter approval to pass. That’s a high bar. It’s currently polling above that, though millions of dollars have yet to be spent by opponents.
Lynda Bell, an Amendment 4 opponent who leads Florida Right to Life, said Trump’s opposition to late-term abortions and his support for parental rights show he would not and should not back Amendment 4. She said she can’t see how Trump can remain silent on the amendment because the issue is “going to be a debate question. It’s going to be a question in the media. And they’re going to keep saying ‘look at this pro-life guy dodging the question.’”
“If he dodges it, he dodges it,” she added. “I think if he was really smart, he would handle it to where he turns the issue to make the left look how radical it is. . . . The one thing I do not want Donald Trump to look like is wishy-washy.”
One top evangelical leader who advises the Trump campaign and spoke to The Bulwark on condition of anonymity lamented that the anti-abortion movement did too little to push pro-family policies outside of abortion, causing them to lose “hearts and minds” in the face of “a media campaign from Planned Parenthood.”
The leader argued that Trump was “smart to stay above the fray. Unfortunately, it’s a lose-lose for him. If he comes out against the ballot initiative in Florida, you know there’s $100 million ready to come down the pike to nonstop berate him for overly restrictive abortion bans.”
Yet another social conservative leader who has advised Trump agreed he should stay quiet because “if he’s talking about abortion, he’s losing”—but “if he’s talking about the economy and immigration, he’s winning.”
Yet the adviser wasn’t entirely sanguine about the politics of the situation, noting that enthusiasm was at risk among anti-abortion voters this fall. That was especially true after the Trump campaign rammed through changes to the Republican party platform that greatly scaled back its emphasis on abortion.
“It’s not that the platform didn’t end up okay,” the person said. “But we had no reason to believe we would walk into a meeting, having the platform pass with basically no debate after fifteen minutes and then it would be over. So some of us are scared to death. And the fact we can’t get an answer on this [Amendment 4] adds to the PTSD.”
No relation to the author.
Mainstream political journalism in the US is way too deferential to political candidates. Only in the US is it optional whether a candidate chooses to discuss his past actions and his proposed policies. You need a bit of British and Aussie in your press corp, trump wouldn’t know what fucking hit him.
Keep asking Trump how he'll vote on Amendment 4. Keep asking pro-life activists their reaction to Trump's post that he'll be great for "women's reproductive rights."