Former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday at a town hall event that he was “proud” to have helped overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
During the Fox News town hall, Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, was asked by an Iowa voter whether he would work to oppose all abortions and whether his anti-abortion position was better than that of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his campaign rival.
The town hall in Des Moines occurred at the same time that DeSantis was facing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at a CNN debate about two miles away.
Trump replied that the question wouldn’t even be asked without the conservative justices that he appointed: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
“[For] 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it,” Trump said. “And I’m proud to have done it.”
The Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in 2022 with its decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Twenty-one states now severely restrict or ban abortion since the removal of the protections of Roe v. Wade.
But Trump criticised the anti-abortion movement after the Dobbs decision for explicitly political reasons. He saw the push for total abortion bans as contributing to Republicans’ poor showings in the 2022 midterm elections.
And he has at times clashed with anti-abortion groups in his current presidential campaign. He called the strict abortion ban adopted in Florida under DeSantis “terrible.”
He made that political point on Wednesday as well.
“You have to win elections,” Trump said. “Otherwise you’re going to be back where you were, and you can’t let that ever happen again.”
Abortion rights will again be a major issue in the 2024 election, with the public largely opposed to the demise of Roe v. Wade. A near record 55% of Americans reported that they support universal abortion rights, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll in November.