Trump Says He Opposes Six-Week Florida Abortion Ban, Hints He Will Vote for Abortion-Rights Referendum

Former president Donald Trump on Thursday said he opposes the six-week abortion ban that went into effect in Florida following the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision when asked whether he will vote for a ballot measure codifying abortion rights in the state’s constitution this fall.

“I think the six-week is too short,” he said. “There has to be more time, and I’ve told them that I want more weeks.”

After a follow-up question, Trump said he will “be voting that we need more than six weeks.”

Florida Amendment 4, the ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution, represents one of the most extreme proposals on the issue in recent memory. It holds that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

The former president has distanced himself from the pro-life movement over the course of his 2024 campaign, posting on Truth Social last week that a second Trump term “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a phrase generally understood to mean access to abortion.

He had previously said voters “must follow [their hearts] on this issue” rather than taking a pro-life position and declared that abortion policy should be dictated on a state-by-state basis, leaving the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization “deeply disappointed.”

Trump has gone so far as to attack fellow Republicans who criticized his hedge on abortion: After Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said he thinks it “would be a mistake” for the GOP  to abandon “the opposition to late-term abortion,” the former president wrote that Graham was “doing a great disservice to the Republican Party, and to our Country.”

“Terminating Roe v. Wade was, according to all Legal Scholars, a Great Event, but sometimes with Great Events come difficulties,” Trump posted. “Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency . . .”

Also on Thursday, Trump said his administration would force health-insurance providers to foot the bill for in-vitro fertilization treatments.

“Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” he told NBC News. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance companies pay.”