Not long after delivering a statement Monday on abortion in which he said the divisive issue should be left up to the states to decide, former President Donald Trump emphasized Democrats are the "radicals on abortion."
In a Truth Social post Monday afternoon, Trump provided a video of former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, being asked about a 2019 bill that sought to ease restrictions for third-trimester abortions in the state.
"If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen," Northam said in the video. "The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother."
"In other words, the Baby would be executed after birth!" Trump wrote in the post. "ALWAYS REMEMBER – THE DEMOCRATS ARE THE RADICALS ON ABORTION."
It was among a series of abortion-related posts Trump made following his main policy statement on abortion in which he declared that because the federal right to abortion was overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2022, it is a state's rights issue. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, stopped short of proposing a nationwide ban and choosing a more moderate stance heading into November's general election.
"The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life, and the side of mothers, fathers [and] their beautiful babies," Trump said in a Truth social video. "Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded [to] be ended: Roe v. Wade. It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month.
"The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth, and that's exactly what it is – the baby is born [and] the baby is executed after birth – is unacceptable and almost everyone agrees with that. My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state."