Welp, it happened: Former President Trump managed to make his most delusional comments about abortion yet, and that’s really saying something! Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday night, Trump simultaneously praised himself for killing Roe v. Wade, called it “beautiful” (??) that states are making their own abortion laws, and suggested things have actually “[become] more liberal” since the Dobbs decision in 2022. There’s really no point trying to make sense of his word vomit, so I am simply here to fact-check-slash-roast his nonsense to pieces.
“Now the states are deciding. And by the way, in many cases, like Ohio, it became… more liberal or progressive than people would have thought,” Trump said. “But the people of Ohio decided. The people of Kansas decided. The people are now deciding.” To be clear, before the Supreme Court reversed Roe, abortion was legal in Ohio, only for Dobbs to open the door for a near-total ban to take effect, requiring a 10-year-old rape victim to travel to Indiana for abortion care. Ohio’s abortion ban was stayed in court shortly after, and an abortion rights ballot measure in the state won an uphill battle in November. But I’d hardly say things have “become more liberal” as a result of Roe getting killed, especially as Ohio Republicans work tirelessly to try and undermine the ballot measure.
It’s true (and encouraging) that reproductive rights have been winning on direct ballot measures since 2022—that hasn’t changed the reality that over a dozen states have totally or almost totally banned abortion, or that every other week seems to turn up new national headlines about pregnant women almost dying from being denied emergency abortions. All of this is a direct consequence of Trump’s ostensibly moderate “leave abortion up to the states” position.
Trump continued, “So now, states are voting on [abortion]. And in many cases, it’s more liberal. In some cases, they’re going the other direction. But the people are deciding. … And in many ways, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.” It’s certainly… something to listen to a man who tried to steal an election and inspired a deadly insurrection wax poetic about the beauty of democracy. That said, it’s all bullshit. The only people who should be “deciding” whether someone has to stay pregnant are actual pregnant people.
Still, Trump maintained that the post-Roe wasteland he’s so proud to have helped create has “[brought] the country together on an issue that was very, very bad.” In his mind, we’re all sitting in a circle around a campfire, arms linked, singing kumbayah, while hospitals tell women with life-threatening, nonviable pregnancies to wait in the parking lot until they’re on the brink of death and come back then.
In the wake of Trump’s interview, Democrats have appropriately been reading his bullshit for filth: “Donald Trump thinks it’s ‘beautiful’ that a 13-year-old rape victim was forced to carry the pregnancy due to Mississippi’s abortion ban; that a young woman in Texas almost died because doctors were afraid to treat her; and that a Florida woman was turned away from the emergency room and lost roughly half her blood in a single day after experiencing a miscarriage,” Democratic National Committee national press secretary Emilia Rowland said in a statement shared with Jezebel. “Anyone who thinks women dying or suffering extreme physical, mental, and emotional harm because they can’t access reproductive health care is a ‘beautiful thing to watch’ is fundamentally unfit to serve.”
Trump’s comments follow several months of nonsensical spin, flip-flopping, and self-contradiction. He’s said abortion should be left up to the states—and also that states should be allowed to monitor people’s pregnancies and punish people who have abortions. More recently, he said he’s “looking at” restrictions on contraception, then went on social media and insisted hours later that he has “never, and will never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control.” (A lie! He did restrict birth control as president!) So, take from all of this what you will, which should be that the man is a pathological liar who doesn’t care whether pregnant people live or die—and who also very obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about, since calling things “beautiful” is pretty much his go-to when Trump doesn’t know what else to say.
