After Donald Trump voiced support for a 15-week national abortion ban, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign released an angry response from a Texas woman who nearly died due to that state’s anti-abortion measures, enduring a “nightmare” she said Trump created.
“My family has been forever altered by the nightmare that Donald Trump created by overturning Roe,” Amanda Zurawski said.
In June 2022, five rightwing US supreme court justices – three appointed by Trump – overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling that had guaranteed abortion rights at the federal level since 1973.
The court’s Dobbs v Jackson ruling returned abortion rights to individual US states, allowing Republican-run states like Texas to impose severe restrictions.
Zurawski, from Austin, sued the state of Texas after nearly dying during pregnancy, having at first been denied an abortion.
“I nearly died because my doctor could not give me the care I needed,” she said on Wednesday, “and my ability to have children in the future has been forever compromised by the damage that was caused.”
In post-Dobbs elections, Republican threats to reproductive rights have proved an effective campaign issue for Democrats. The Biden campaign has duly made protecting abortion rights a central part of its platform.
As Trump campaigns to return to the White House, he must consider how loudly he can boast of his role in bringing down Roe while courting women, moderates and independents.
His campaign previously denied reports that he had expressed support for a national ban at 16 weeks, which it called “fake news”.
But on Tuesday, Trump told WABC radio, from New York: “We’re going to come up with a time – and maybe we could bring the country together on that issue.
“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I’m thinking in terms of that. And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hardliners are agreeing … 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”
Polling shows most Americans believe abortion should be legal through the initial stages of pregnancy. According to an Associated Press-NORC poll last June, about half of US adults say abortions should be permitted at 15 weeks.
Trump told WABC: “All the legal scholars on both sides agree: it’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue.”
He also said he supported exceptions for cases of rape, incest or threats to the life of the mother, because: “Here’s the problem, you have to win elections. And otherwise, you’d be right back where you started.”
In her statement, Zurawski criticised press coverage of Trump’s remarks, saying: “Trump isn’t ‘signaling’, he isn’t ‘suggesting’, he isn’t ‘leaning toward’ anything – he is actively planning to ban abortion nationwide if he’s elected, inflicting the same cruelty and chaos I’ve experienced on the entire country.
“We cannot allow that to happen.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
