Trump’s Changing Messages on Abortion, in 660 Quotes

When he first ran for president, Donald J. Trump talked repeatedly about his opposition to abortion. “I’m pro-life, and I was originally pro-choice,” he said in 2016. Another time that year, he said, “I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges.” In total in 2016, according to a New York Times analysis, he described himself as “pro-life” 36 times:

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In this campaign, though, he hardly ever uses the term. This year, he has described himself as “pro-life” once:

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During his re-election campaign in 2020, Mr. Trump often spoke of his support for a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In total, before the Supreme Court decision that ended the national right to abortion in 2022, he expressed his support for a federal ban 50 times:

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Since the court’s decision, Dobbs v. Jackson, which allowed individual states to ban abortion, he has expressed support for a federal ban only once

, saying, “It could be a state ban, it could be a federal ban.”

More often, he has said the exact opposite, that he opposes a federal ban. Since the court’s decision, he has said that 11 times:

. “I’m not signing a ban, and there’s no reason to sign a ban”; “There will not be a federal ban”; “I’m not signing a national abortion bill.”

We looked at all the statements Mr. Trump has made about abortion since he first ran for president, in speeches, interviews and posts online, that were cataloged by Roll Call Factba.se. We categorized 660 of them based on the words he used. The analysis shows how his messaging over the last decade has changed with the political moment — and how this year he has tried to distance himself from the core beliefs of the anti-abortion movement.

There is no evidence that Mr. Trump’s stance on abortion has changed. As president, he did more to restrict abortion rights in the United States than any other president, including by appointing three of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. As recently as the September debate, he took credit, saying, “I did a great service in doing it.” Anti-abortion groups have laid out a pathway for him to effectively ban abortion nationwide if he is re-elected.

As it became clear that the Dobbs decision was hurting some Republican candidates, however, he changed his messaging, sometimes directly contradicting himself. He said as much in April, when he released a video on Truth Social emphasizing that Republicans needed to talk about abortion in a way that would appeal to voters: “You must follow your heart on this issue. But remember, you must also win elections.”

Mr. Trump’s ambiguous or even contradictory statements can allow voters to hear whichever message they want to hear, political analysts said.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said that Mr. Trump had been consistent in his stance on abortion, and that he had always supported the rights of states to make decisions on abortion rights.

Jason Rapert, founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which supports a nationwide abortion ban, said, “I think we should remember the Donald Trump of 2016, and what he was saying from his heart, and he made good on those policy decisions.”

Mr. Rapert said he was “extremely disappointed” to hear Mr. Trump say he did not support a federal abortion ban. But he does not necessarily believe him, he said: “I realized that he really is delivering messaging that came from many of the consultants around him.”

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said Mr. Trump was giving mixed messages because he was trying to hold onto the support of evangelical voters while also trying to win back moderates who have turned against him because of his role in overturning Roe.

“It’s a winning strategy with evangelicals — you never hear born-again Christians are defecting; they’re not,” Ms. Lake said. “It’s been a loss with suburban women, with younger women, with the moderate Republican women who now call themselves independents, and he’s been trying to figure out a way to get them back.”

In her polling and focus groups, she said, many voters have never really believed that Mr. Trump opposes abortion. His recent rhetoric “just reinforces that his heart’s not really in it, he doesn’t really believe this,” she said. “But on the other hand, the MAGA party does believe in it, and his political calculations are such that he did Dobbs and he will continue to do more.”

Trump’s evolution

Before he became a national political figure, Mr. Trump had described himself as “very pro-choice,” so in his initial run for president as a Republican, he repeatedly emphasized that he had abandoned that position.

Mr. Trump was courting the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, whose votes he needed. He promised to appoint “pro-life judges” to the Supreme Court. He made abortion restrictions a staple of his 2016 campaign, speaking often about how important the issue was.

After he was elected, Mr. Trump kept many of his promises to the anti-abortion movement. He enacted several regulatory policies that limited funding for abortion and organizations that supported it. He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court from a list of candidates pre-approved by the anti-abortion movement.

As he approached his re-election campaign, he supported a bill in Congress that would have banned abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The bill was a major theme of campaign rallies, and was featured in his 2020 State of the Union address and a speech that year at the March for Life, the anti-abortion movement’s biggest annual event. He was the first sitting president to speak there.

He called on Congress to “defend the dignity of life and to pass legislation prohibiting late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in their mother’s womb.”

After the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion in 2022, Mr. Trump often celebrated his role in it: “If you look at what we’ve done with Roe v. Wade, we did something that everyone said couldn’t be done, and we got it done.”

At the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September, he again praised Dobbs, and “the genius and heart and strength” of the Supreme Court justices who supported it.

Later that month, he extolled his record on the issue: “I’ve done an unbelievable job on the abortion question.”

He often said that all Americans or “all legal scholars” supported the court’s decision to overturn Roe, despite polling majorities and numerous legal briefs that opposed it.

During this campaign, though, he has sent mixed messages. At first, he said he would support a Florida measure expanding abortion access, then said he wouldn’t. He said he wouldn’t restrict access to abortion pills, then said he was open to it.

He has also recently repeated his support for exceptions to abortion bans for women who are victims of rape or incest, or whose lives are threatened by their pregnancies. These statements somewhat conflict with his embrace of state-based approaches to abortion policy, since many states with abortion bans do not have these exceptions.

Melania Trump, the former first lady, published a book this month in which she said she supported abortion rights, a surprise that some political analysts said was a calculated move to appeal to more moderate voters.

For much of this campaign, Mr. Trump declined to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban.

Then, in recent weeks, he changed course again, saying that he would veto a federal ban, in direct opposition to the goals of the anti-abortion movement. He said in an online message earlier this month: “Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters.”

Otherwise, Mr. Trump is not talking much about how he would handle abortion policy from the executive branch. Regardless of who wins the election, major federal legislation on the topic is unlikely to pass Congress in the next few years.

Instead, he has begun saying abortion is not an important issue: “The country’s falling apart,” he said recently. “We’re going to end up in World War III, and all they can talk about is abortion. That’s all they talk about. And it really no longer pertains because we’ve done something on abortion that nobody thought was possible.”

But the president still has major influence on abortion access nationwide, through regulations and executive actions. In Mr. Trump’s last administration, he cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood for contraceptive services. He appointed numerous federal judges who oppose abortion rights. If elected again, he could also use the Food and Drug Administration or the Justice Department to ban or restrict the mailing of abortion pills, which have contributed to increased abortion access since Dobbs.

“I know he’s steering clear with only days left until the election,” said Mr. Rapert of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, “but clearly the federal government can do more.”

The complete list of Trump’s statements on abortion

Here is a list of Mr. Trump’s statements on abortion since 2015, organized by topic.