Former President Donald Trump's team is insisting that even though he says he might support a Florida ballot initiative that would expand abortion rights, he has not yet said whether he will vote in November for the measure.
"He simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short," Karoline Leavitt, the Republican nominee's national press secretary, commented Thursday night, adding that he "has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, reports The New York Times.
Trump, during an interview with NBC News on Thursday, stopped short of a full endorsement of Florida's Amendment 4, which would guarantee the right to an abortion "before viability," at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Current Florida law prohibits abortion after six weeks.
"I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks," Trump commented while repeating his criticisms on his adopted state's current ban.
If Trump votes for Amendment 4, that would put him not only at odds with state GOP leaders who are pushing to defeat the measure but also with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was a rival against Trump for the GOP nomination earlier this year.
Polls in Florida are showing that Amendment 4 is more popular than Trump in the state, indicating that voters could split their ticket, voting both for him and for expanding abortion rights.
Trump, meanwhile, has been shifting his views on abortion, while refusing to take sides on the Florida referendum.
After Florida's Supreme Court in April agreed to allow Amendment 4 on the November ballot, Trump has remained noncommittal on the measure, saying both in April and this month that he would address the issue later.
"Yes on 4" campaign communications director Natasha Sutherland in a statement described the amendment as a "nonpartisan issue" and said that the "majority of Floridians do not want the government making decisions for them when it comes to something as personal and complicated as pregnancy."
Meanwhile, Trump appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court whose votes helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
DeSantis signed his state's six-week abortion ban last year, after previously enacting a 15-week ban in 2022. Before that, abortions were allowed in Florida for pregnancies up to 24 weeks.
Trump, while campaigning against DeSantis earlier this year, called the six-week ban a "terrible mistake."
Trump on Thursday came under fire from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a statement that while Trump has "consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy," a vote for Amendment 4 "completely undermines his position."
Later, the group issued a correction, after Dannenfelser said she spoke with Trump.
"He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4," she said.
Meanwhile, prominent anti-abortion activist Lila Rose, who has been urging her followers not to vote for Trump unless he changes course on his abortion message, spoke out on X Thursday about Trump's comments on the Florida legislation and about his promise that if elected, he will push for insurance companies to cover IVF procedures in full.
"What should the pro-life movement do when the RNC and the formerly pro-life presidential candidate abandons the pro-life position?" the Live Action founder said. "Elections are about the FUTURE, not the past."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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