Ron DeSantis wonders if Donald Trump was ‘sincere’ in opposing abortion as President

Ron DeSantis returned to his attacks on Donald Trump, wondering if the former President whose Supreme Court picks ended Roe v. Wade was actually “sincere” about wanting to end legalized abortion.

“Was he not sincere in January of 2020? Was he just reading off the teleprompter? Then he didn’t really mean it or has he flipped his position, because maybe he thinks there’s a political benefit to what he’s doing,” DeSantis said in Washington County, Iowa.

“I don’t know how you can just flip on something that’s fundamental, but that’s what he’s done. And he’s provided a lot of aid and comfort to people who are not supportive of the right to life.”

The Florida Governor was spotlighting Trump’s evolution from the pro-life warrior he seemed to be as President to someone less driven by abortion bans in his third run for office.

“Every one of us here today understands the eternal truth. Every child is a sacred and precious gift from God,” Trump said at the March for Life rally in 2020.

DeSantis questions that evolution.

“If you read that speech or watch that speech, he said that that life was a gift from God that the unborn are made in the image of God. He talked about the aspirations to have protections,” DeSantis continued. “That audience was definitely appreciative of what he said. How do you go from that to now attacking a state from enacting protections for a heartbeat?”

DeSantis has made hay of Trump calling Florida’s “heartbeat bill” — which bans abortion after the six-week mark of gestation with some narrowly tailored exceptions — a “terrible mistake.”

The Governor also worries that despite Florida requiring 3/5 support for a citizens’ initiative, pro-choice activists might successfully challenge that law next year.

“But they’re trying to get on the ballot to do a constitutional amendment in Florida and they would need 60% not 50. But the reality is it’s a very big expensive state to be able to advertise in and I guarantee you the other side would come loaded for bear,” DeSantis warned earlier this month in Iowa.

Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF), the committee working to put abortion access on the ballot in 2024, has nearly 750,000 signatures of the 891,523 needed.

The referendum, if it goes on the ballot, would ask voters to agree that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”

Proponents say it would restore the right to an abortion in Florida to where it was until the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade. For nearly 50 years, that ruling allowed women to end pregnancies up to 24 weeks of gestation. The new Dobbs decision moved regulation of the procedure to state jurisdiction.

The Florida Legislature passed a 15-week ban in 2022, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Then, during last Session, lawmakers passed a six-week ban on the procedure, but kept in place some exceptions.

Right now, the 15-week ban is under state Supreme Court review as Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of abortion providers sued to stop the law, arguing that the 2022 measure violates the right to privacy in the state constitution.