Trump's abortion answers complicate Michigan GOP's efforts to neutralize Dem attacks

LANSING, Mich. — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave a murky collection of answers during Tuesday's debate about how he would handle a proposal to prohibit abortion amid a stream of mailers from the Michigan Republican Party specifically telling voters he wouldn't sign such a ban into law.

After Michiganians approved a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in 2022, state Republicans this year have been attempting to neutralize criticism from Democrats about their past anti-abortion stances.

A federal policy outlawing abortion would be one of the few ways for Republicans to undo the state level protections in the Michigan amendment. But Trump and his supporters have been promoting comments from the Republican nominee that he would leave the matter up to the individual states and not support a national ban.

During Tuesday night's presidential debate, Trump initially said he's "not signing a ban," but then declined to directly answer two questions from the moderator about whether he would veto such a proposal if Congress sent it to him.

"Well, I won’t have to," Trump replied at one point, contending that there wouldn't be enough votes to get a measure to his desk.

The moderator, ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, asked about comments from Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, that Trump would veto a national abortion ban.

"Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD in all fairness," Trump responded.

Michigan Democratic supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris have jumped on Trump's uncertain answers during a tight race in the state, saying the comments reenforced their arguments that Trump would work to hinder abortion rights if he's reelected in November.

"I think that's all you need to know," U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Lansing, said of Trump declining Tuesday to say he would veto a federal abortion ban.

In an interview, Stabenow noted that Trump nominated three justices for the U.S. Supreme Court who decided in June 2022 to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which had protected access to abortion nationally.

During a Thursday night speech in Grand Rapids, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz addressed Trump's sidestepping of the debate question about vetoing a national abortion ban.

"You know why he refused to say because you know exactly what he would do. Look, they don't trust women and women don't trust them," Walz told supporters gathered at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. "That is that simple."

During Tuesday's debate, Harris said she would work to restore abortion rights nationally that were in place prior the U.S. Supreme Court's decision ending the Roe v. Wade legal precedent. Prior to that decision, late-term abortions after 21 weeks were rare, consisting of 1% of all abortions, according to the San Francisco-based health policy research organization KFF or Kaiser Family Foundation.

"I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade," Harris said.

In a statement this week, the Trump campaign's national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the former president had been "consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion and has been very clear that he will not sign a federal ban when he is back in the White House."

"Contrarily, Kamala Harris and the Democrats are radically out of touch with the majority of Americans in their support for abortion up until birth and forcing taxpayers to fund it," Leavitt said.

GOP's barrage of mailers

Starting in late August, the Michigan Republican Party began sending out a barrage of mailers to voters making arguments like Leavitt's. On Thursday, another round of mailers arrived at Michigan homes again declaring, "Trump won't sign a federal abortion ban."

Of the mailers flowing from the Michigan Republican Party touting Trump's "common sense policies on abortion," Stabenow said, "Women are not stupid."

In recent years, the Michigan Legislature's Republican lawmakers have usually supported anti-abortion policies. In a November 2022 memo about the results of the 2022 election, Paul Cordes, then chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party, labeled the abortion rights constitutional amendment "one of the most evil and extreme constitutional amendments ever put before voters."

State Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton Township, said she found the abortion discussion at Tuesday's presidential debate "frustrating" because, she contended, the moderators were looking for what she described as a "gotcha moment."

It's up to each state to decide its abortion policies, Bollin said. And the issue of abortion access was settled in Michigan because of the 2022 constitutional amendment, said Bollin, co-chairwoman of the legislative Pro-Life Caucus.

"We have to get back to governing and stop the gaslighting," Bollin said.

Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, R-Allen, who was endorsed by Trump in 2021, said it appeared Trump thought the idea of Congress sending him an abortion ban was a hypothetical that wasn't going to happen.

Because of the U.S. Senate's filibuster rules, it would likely require 60 of the 100 senators to approve an abortion ban to get it to Trump. Democrats effectively held only a narrow 51-seat majority in the U.S. Senate after the 2022 elections.

“I think that’s fair for people in politics to say, 'That’s not a real thing. I’m not going to comment on that,'" Lindsey said.

A bill can become law if it's signed by the president or if it's not signed within 10 days and Congress is in session.

'Refused to say'

Michigan Democrats didn't see the remarks the same way.

Trump had "refused to say if he would veto a national abortion ban after promising to do so countless times," said Lavora Barnes, chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party.

"Make no mistake, abortion is on the ballot this year, and Trump's MAGA henchmen in our Legislature have made it clear time and time again that they oppose abortion rights," Barnes said. "No matter what he says, Trump has (been) and always will be a danger to reproductive freedom, and one look at his record makes that crystal clear."

Stabenow, the Democratic U.S. senator, said even Trump's comments in favor of leaving abortion policies up to the states showed he missed the point. It's not about whether federal lawmakers or state lawmakers set the standards, she said.

"Neither should decide women's health care," Stabenow said.

Stabenow also said Trump could attempt to ban abortions administratively without signing abortion legislation. She cited the 1873 Comstock Act, a law that's on the books but currently unenforced. Trump could attempt to revive that 151-year-old law, which prohibits the transportation by mail of any instrument or substance that can be used to produce an abortion, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

During the debate, Harris, the Democratic nominee, said she would "proudly" sign legislation to put the abortion access protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law.

"The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with their body," Harris said.

Trump countered that such an abortion rights proposal would never reach the president's desk. Her statements were "just talk," he said.

But Stabenow said there's "definitely" a scenario where an abortion rights bill could be passed into law if a Democratic-controlled Senate moved to eliminate the filibuster, a procedural move that allows members of the minority party to hold up legislation.

Asked about the 60 votes currently needed in the Senate to override a filibuster, Stabenow quipped, "You're assuming the filibuster would remain."

Trump tried to paint Harris as an abortion radical during Tuesday night’s debate, claiming the vice president would put no limits on abortion if elected.

"Will she allow abortion in the eighth month, nine month, seven month?" Trump asked Harris without looking at her.

"C'mon," Harris replied, shaking her head.

"Would you do that?" Trump asked.

Harris turned to Trump and told him to answer the moderator’s question about whether he would veto a national abortion ban while he continued to claim she would allow abortions during the third trimester of a pregnancy “and probably after birth.”

“That’s not true,” Harris said without saying what restrictions, if any, she supports.

The ramifications

Abortion rights have proven to be a potent political issue in Michigan.

In 2022, Democrats used an onslaught of TV ads to blast Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon for her arguments that abortion should be banned with only an exception for instances when the mother's life is in danger.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vowed to "fight like hell" to protect abortion rights. Whitmer won in November 2022 by 10 percentage points, 54%-44%.

In the same election, voters approved 57%-43% the constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights.

Cordes, the Michigan GOP's then chief of staff, said in his memo after the election that Dixon had faced "millions of dollars in unanswered advertisements" using her own words on the subject of abortion.

Voters viewed "Tudor and Proposal 3 as a package deal" at the polls, Cordes wrote of the abortion rights amendment.

A statewide poll commissioned The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) found in late August that 12.5% of likely Michigan voters identified "abortion and women's rights" as the most important issue in the presidential race.

"Abortion and women's rights" was the second most frequent answer, behind only jobs and the economy at 19.5%.

The survey of 600 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Trump had an edge of 1.2 percentage points, leading 44.7%-43.5% over Harris, or within the margin of error.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra, a former nine-term congressman from Holland, has acknowledged in recent weeks that abortion rights are an issue Trump and GOP candidates have to navigate this fall with voters.

Asked in an Aug. 21 interview whether the new mailers touting Trump's "common sense" abortion policies showed the Michigan GOP's position on the issue changed, Hoekstra said no.

“I’ll talk to you about the mailer after I’ve seen the mailer," Hoekstra told a reporter.

Eight days later, in an interview on WKAR-TV's "Off The Record," Hoekstra was asked why the state GOP is distributing campaign literature saying Trump would veto a national abortion ban.

"Because (Democrats are) saying we're going to implement a national abortion ban, which is absolutely a total lie," Hoekstra said, "because two things: Donald Trump has said he will not sign it, and the second thing is it will never pass Congress."