Presidential candidate former President Donald Trump would, if elected, veto a national abortion ban, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said on Aug. 25.
“If you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it,” Vance, Trump’s running mate, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The president can sign or veto a piece of legislation that reaches his desk after it is approved by both chambers of Congress. Congress can override a veto, but that requires votes by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate.
The Republican vice presidential nominee said a Trump–Vance administration would not impose a national ban on abortion.
“I can absolutely commit that,” he said.
“Donald Trump, I think, has staked his position and made it very explicit,” Vance said later. “He wants this to be a state decision; states are going to make this determination themselves.”
Trump has not said explicitly that he would veto legislation banning abortion nationwide, but he has said that abortion restrictions should be left up to states.
“Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights,” the former president said in a video posted on social media earlier this year. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint; the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both.”
The ruling also reversed a 1992 Supreme Court decision that had prevented states from imposing significant restrictions on abortion before a fetus could survive outside the womb.
“[The ruling was] only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, at the time. “It was my great honor to do so!”
Vance said on NBC that Trump “wants to end this culture war over this particular topic” and that “Trump’s view is that we want the individual states, and their individual cultures, and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue.”
Instead, the federal government “ought to be focused on getting food prices down, getting housing prices down,” Vance said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump, has told voters that Trump supports a federal ban on abortion.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said on X, “God have mercy on this nation if this is now the position of what was the Pro-Life Party.”
Trump, meanwhile, took to social media on Aug. 23 to say that his second term “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
He told reporters hours later, at an event in Las Vegas, that he is “very strong on women’s reproductive rights,” including access to in vitro fertilization.
