Donald Trump did not get the memo.
The former president on Wednesday responded to the Arizona Supreme Court’s reviving a harsh 1864 abortion ban — which indeed threatens abortion providers with two to five years in prison — by punting on this basic issue.
Asked whether doctors who provide abortions should be punished, Trump allowed that certain states could do that.
“I’d let that be to the states,” Trump said. “You know, everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights. And what we wanted to do is get it back to the states, because for 53 years it’s been a fight. And now the states are handling it. And some have handled it very well, and the others will end up handling it very well.
“And those are the things that states are going to make a determination about,” he said.
The answer was in keeping with Trump’s effort to beg off questions about specific abortion policies. Earlier in the week, on Monday, Trump transparently sought to label the issue as one of states’ rights, so he doesn’t have to take a position on particular numbers of weeks or other dicey subjects such as punishing doctors. It’s one thing to say states should handle policy; it’s another to provide basically no judgment on what is acceptable policy.
The foolhardiness of that approach quickly came into focus when, on Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court revived the 1864 law.
The fact is that leaving this to the states — some very red — is likely to lead, and has led, to policies that the national Republican Party would rather not account for. Despite the GOP’s 2022 memo, some red states also have laws on the books making it a crime punishable by years in prison to provide an abortion. The vast majority of the Senate GOP conference sponsored a law that imposes prison sentences of up to five years.
It’s important to note that Trump wasn’t specifically asked Wednesday about putting doctors in prison, as Arizona’s law threatens; the question was about punishment more broadly. But the context of the question was pretty clear, given that this is one of the law’s most controversial aspects.
Trump could easily have said that two to five years in prison is too much. But he instead sought to say broadly that Arizona had gone too far — on what, it’s not clear — and leave it at that.
Trump’s answer is also particularly puzzling when you consider that he’s stumbled over much the same issue before.
Back in 2016, Trump was asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews whether women who obtain abortions should be punished, and Trump said yes:
MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the woman?
TRUMP: Yes.
MATTHEWS: 10 cents, 10 years, what?
TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know.
About 8 in 10 Americans oppose punishing women for abortions. Even major antiabortion groups didn’t support that idea at the time. Trump reversed himself on it within a matter of hours.
But that answer was instructive. Trump has always been much more comfortable speaking in broad strokes about overturning Roe. When it comes to specifics and what’s politically acceptable — three-quarters of Americans have opposed making providing an abortion a felony — he’s out of his depth. His positions have changed significantly even since he switched from “very pro-choice” to antiabortion as he launched his political career, and even during the 2024 campaign. He called six-week abortion bans “terrible” seven months ago; now he won’t even say that.
The problem for the GOP right now is that this is such a divisive issue that it is crying out for leadership and a path forward — a set of principles that can steer them in a fraught time in which the American people don’t like what Republicans have done with their newfound ability to restrict abortion rights.
But in Trump, they have someone almost uniquely afraid and unwilling to guide them. And Wednesday was just the first taste of how that could go wrong.
