Donald Trump, who described himself as “very pro-choice” on Meet the Press in 1999, came almost full circle on the same program this weekend.
He called Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” He talked of brokering a compromise between the pro-lifers and pro-choicers to craft a federal law leaving both sides pleased, a scenario as outlandish as Mexicans paying for a border wall.
“It could be state or it could be federal,” he said about the floated kumbaya legislation. “I don’t frankly care.”
Many do. Rather than take a victory lap in his success in limiting a procedure that takes human life, he says he wants to undo these “terrible” state laws put in place largely by his supporters.
He does not get pro-lifers. He also does not understand federalism.
Whatever one thinks about abortion — surely a wide spectrum of opinion exists among the readership — conservatives stood united on Roe v. Wade pulling justifications out of the ether. It was a decision based on neither the Constitution nor precedent but whim. It deserved to fall.
Allowing states to govern themselves, rather than a one-size-fits-all law brokered by Trump but modified by any Democrats who may succeed him, seems like the best compromise of all. Who cares if New Yorkers hate the laws in Ohio? Donald Trump, apparently.
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Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, is the author of Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (ISI Books, 2018), The War on Football (Regnery, 2013), Blue Collar Intellectuals (ISI Books, 2011), A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New York Post, City Journal, National Review, and his own website, www.flynnfiles.com.