'He is not done': Harris responds to Trump’s latest flip-flop on Florida ballot measure

30 August 2024

In a matter of 24 hours, former President Donald Trump did a complete one-eighty on an issue that's at the top of the priorities list for some of the most passionate Republican voters. Now, he's doing damage control.

On Thursday, Trump told a reporter ahead of a Pottersville, Michigan rally that he would be voting in favor of Florida's Amendment 4 ballot initiative. That ballot question would enshrine abortion rights into the Sunshine State's constitution, and Trump told NBC that he would be "voting that we need more than six weeks," which is the current cutoff for abortions in Florida.

However, on Friday — notably after backlash from conservative evangelicals — he then told Fox News ahead of a Pennsylvania rally on Friday that he would not in fact be voting for Amendment 4. The former president baselessly asserted that the ballot initiative would allow doctors to kill human babies after they're born (which is illegal in all 50 states), saying "all of that stuff is unacceptable so I will be voting no for that reason."

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris is warning voters to not be confused by the ex-president's fluid positions on reproductive rights. In an official statement released by her campaign (and posted to the social media platform Bluesky by progressive organizer Murshed Zaheed), Harris said Trump's flip-flop ended up making his position on abortion "very clear."

"He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant," Harris said of Florida's current six-week abortion ban. "Trump proudly brags about the role he played in overturning Roe v. Wade and said there should be punishment for women who have an abortion. So of course he thinks it's a 'beautiful thing' that women in Florida and across the country are being turned away from emergency rooms, face life-threatening situations, and are forced to travel hundreds of miles for the care they need."

"And understand, he is not done," she continued. "As a part of Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, threaten access to fertility treatments and ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress."

Harris' reference to Trump banning abortion nationwide "with or without Congress" appears to be a reference to page 562 of Project 2025 (formally titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise), which calls on the next Republican administration to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873. That legislation — which the Washington Post referred to as a "long dormant law" — makes it illegal for abortion-related materials to be sent through the U.S. mail. And because the law is already on the books, Trump could simply choose to enforce the law as it stands without Congress having the opportunity to weigh in.

As the Center for American Progress explained, enforcing the Comstock Act and thereby making it illegal for abortion pills to be sent through the mail would amount to a "de facto abortion ban," as medication is the most common method by which abortions are conducted. Trump has already indicated earlier this month that he would be open to revoking access to the abortion pill Mifepristone.

In 2023, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas revoked the FDA's approval of Mifepristone, despite it having FDA approval for more than two decades and frequently being the drug of choice for medication abortions across the country. Trump praised that decision, saying "I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it."

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is Trump's 2024 running mate, has insisted that Trump would veto a national abortion ban if it reached his desk. However, as Harris noted, Trump has previously bragged: "I was able to kill Roe v. Wade," and frequently reminds voters that he was the president to have appointed the three Supreme Court justices who overturned 50 years of constitutionally protected abortion rights.

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