By suggesting — however temporarily — that he was open to a Florida ballot measure that would guarantee the right to an abortion until the time of fetal viability, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again played his mostly white evangelical base for suckers. Those white evangelicals helped put him in power in 2016 to accomplish their longstanding goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. Now, those same voters have staked their hopes for a total ban on abortion on Trump winning the 2024 presidential election. But there Trump was last week, telling an NBC News reporter that he thinks Florida’s current law, which bans abortions after six weeks, is too restrictive. But then his evangelical base quickly brought him to heel.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again played his white evangelical base for suckers.
“I think six weeks is too short,” Trump said Thursday. “There has to be more time and so I want more weeks. I am going to be voting that there will be more than six weeks.” To be clear, Florida voters won’t have the option of choosing how many weeks a pregnancy can progress before an abortion is illegal. They’ll, again, only be voting on whether or not there’s a right to abortion as long as the fetus isn’t viable.
Trump’s answer that Florida’s abortion law is too restrictive angered his most loyal base. But that’s not all. At a campaign stop in Michigan, Trump not only said that he supports IVF — which some diehard abortion opponents oppose — but that he also wants the government to pay the cost of such treatments if insurance companies do not.
The outcry was immediate. Lila Rose, an anti-abortion activist, said in a social media post, “If you don’t stand for pro-life principles, you don’t get pro-life votes.”
Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote on X, “Former President Trump now appears determined to undermine his prolife supporters. His criticism of Florida abortion restrictions & his call for government funding of IVF & his recent statement about ‘reproductive rights’ seem almost calculated to alienate pro-life voters.”
Mohler said the election “is shaping up as a catastrophe for the pro-life movement” and that Trump “had better count the cost of abandoning pro-life voters — quickly.”
And Trump quickly backed down. Of course, he said Friday, he supports the six-week abortion ban in Florida.
But that can’t erase the fact that he interjected unease and distrust into his faithful supporters. What’s surprising is that such voters ever had faith and trust in Trump on this issue. He has been all over the place on the topic of abortion for a long time. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 1999 that he was “very pro-choice.” When other Republicans brought up that remark in a 2015 debate, he said he’d “evolved.” In February 2016 he praised Planned Parenthood, but said he’d defund them because they provided abortion care. At a March 2016 MSNBC town hall, he said “there has to be some form of punishment” for women seeking abortions.
Though he’s often taken credit for defeating Roe v. Wade, when Republicans did poorly in the 2022 midterm elections, he wrote on Truth Social, “It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.” In March, he suggested he’d support a 15-week national abortion ban.
Now he has a dilemma. He knows that the draconian policies of his evangelical base are not popular, which prompted him to say, unconvincingly, that the “Trump administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” But he needs those white evangelical voters to stick by his side. Trump’s frenetic shifting on the issue isn’t about a lack of knowledge. It is about desperation. Trump’s frenetic shifting on the issue isn’t about a lack of knowledge. It is about desperation. Trump has never been good for women, but the combination of JD Vance harping on childless “cat ladies” and their tag-team attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has made them and the GOP look like the party of professional women haters. Trump’s flip-flopping is a sign of his flop sweat. Running against Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, leaves Trump as the old man with his young even more misogynist sidekick yearning for the days when the little woman was at home, barefoot and pregnant. His campaign can’t strike egalitarian message in part because of who Trump and Vance are, but also because they’re beholden to hard-line Republican evangelical supporters who are very much invested in banning abortion and restricting IVF. The demise of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent IVF battles have been devastating for women, and the speeches and commercials featuring women who have been rendered infertile or suffered grievous injury because of these draconian laws stand in condemnation of the intentional cruelty of these laws condemning women to pain, suffering, infertility and even death. These testimonies stand in direct contrast to the ways in which Republicans either try to obfuscate what the abortion bans do, or to downplay their effect on women’s access to reproductive care. The 10 states where abortion rights will be on the ballot in November are a minefield for the Republican Party up and down the ballot. And everything Trump says about the topic leads to another explosion.
Anthea Butler is a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 
