Trump and his vice presidential candidate Vance are trying to sidestep the abortion controversy by making it a states’ rights issue

Apparently, Trump and his policy mavens have decided to reverse their previous commitments to ban abortion rights at the federal level. They have taken the position that the issue should be resolved on a state-by-state basis. Trump (who has changed his tune since he supported a federal abortion ban as president in 2018) said, “You don’t need a federal ban. Roe v. Wade … wasn’t so much about abortion as it was about bringing it back to the states. So the states would negotiate deals. Florida is going to be different from Georgia, and Georgia is going to be different from other places.”

Trump’s just-announced pick for Vice President, JD Vance (who in 2022 said (he is said to favor a national ban on abortion) said yesterday that he agreed with Trump’s position that abortion is a state matter.

The Trump Team (long identified with the pro-life movement, as evidenced by the public image above of a 2020 campaign ad placed in Wikimedia commons)has, in its eagerness to avoid the problem, actually only changed the political problem it is trying to solve.

The problem for them is that even in the modified form they cannot avoid the problem, especially since this is a country where a strong majority believes abortions should be legal in all or most cases. Knowing they can’t win on the macro level, the new “let the states decide” approach is Trump/Vance’s way of staying true to their anti-abortion beliefs without having to deal with the political chaos of the whole.

That’s a desperate and clumsy move, and I don’t think it will work very well.

The problem with Trump’s approach is that in those critical states at stake, there are many pro-abortion advocates who will likely make or break Trump’s campaign. What Trump and Vance don’t seem to understand is that reproductive rights advocates need the reassurance of federal protections — something like Roe v. Wade — and will undoubtedly support a Democratic ticket that promises to work toward that goal.

I don’t know any pro-choice …

Last May, Time magazine pointed out that in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a collective 64% of residents say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. To make matters worse, even in red states, according to Time, 57% of residents say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

Republicans should beware of Trump’s overly simplistic view that this should be a matter of states’ rights.

They only have to look to the recent past, when things turned out well for Democrats in the US, thanks to a strong election showing by abortion rights advocates. elections outside the yearDespite Trump and Vance’s efforts to keep the issue at bay, it seems likely that abortion rights will be a major issue in November and that Republicans will be damaged as a result.

Trump and Vance can run away from it, but they can’t hide.

John Tsitrian is a businessman and author from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentaries also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served three years (1966-69) in the Marines, including a 13-month stint as a radio operator in Vietnam. Reprinted with permission.