Trump promises a ‘deal’ on abortion that will please everyone. It likely doesn’t exist.

Former President Donald Trump is vowing to solve the abortion dilemma that has dogged Republican candidates since the fall of Roe v. Wade with his singular dealmaking acumen.

The presumptive Republican nominee, who has pledged to make a statement on abortion this week, has said for months that if elected he would “come together with all groups” and “negotiate something” that would “make both sides happy,” suggesting that “15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”

“We'll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said.

The tactic has drawn praise from conservatives including Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former counselor, who called it “a reasonable conversation starter.”

“It reflects consensus,” she said of a 15- or 16-week ban, citing her own firm’s polling. “People recognize that the lack of compromise, moderation and reasonableness is on the side of the professional, political left, and the Democrats.”

But Trump, who has blasted other Republicans for speaking “inarticulately” on abortion, is running headlong into the same problem the rest of the party has encountered: There is almost certainly no deal the opposing sides of the abortion wars would accept.

“You’re getting the worst of both worlds” by pitching a 15-week ban, said a GOP political strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns, including Trump’s failed 2020 bid. “Pro-life groups still aren't going to be happy, and you’re still supporting a nationwide limit that Democrats will attack,” said the strategist, granted anonymity to speak critically about the former president’s rhetoric.

“Publicly, [the Trump campaign will] want to keep their options open and stick to the line that he will negotiate something that everyone would be happy with, which of course is nonsense,” he added.

Trump’s promise to address the issue comes as Republicans continue to struggle with how to talk about abortion, their biggest electoral stumbling block for the past two years, without turning off their base, alienating centrists or motivating Democrats. Should Trump appear vague or duck the issue, some of his supporters fear it will allow the Biden campaign to tie him to the more extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement and give Democrats the upper hand in November.

But even as interviews with a range of GOP strategists and anti-abortion activists indicate that Trump’s tentative embrace of a national 15- or 16-week ban appeals to many voters — it is unlikely to neutralize the issue for Republicans or the former president.

Anti-abortion hardliners see anything short of a total ban as an unacceptable capitulation that would allow the vast majority of abortions to continue, while progressives argue that Roe’s standard allowing abortion up to about 24 weeks of pregnancy was already a compromise and that the federal government shouldn’t come between a woman and her doctor.

The conventional wisdom that most voters support abortion access early in pregnancy but oppose it after the first trimester is also crumbling in the post-Roe era as people experience the real world impact of state restrictions.

A recent Fox News poll found that in just the past year, support for a 15-week ban dropped by 12 points, with 54 percent of voters now opposed. The same poll found that support for abortion being legal in all or most circumstances has risen in the demographics Trump most needs to win in November: older Americans, self-identified conservatives, registered Republicans and white evangelical Christians. Republican support, for instance, increased from 24 percent to 36 percent in less than two years.

The popularity of a 15-week ban was also tested in Virginia in 2023, when GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and many down-ballot Republicans ran on the policy, even airing a $1.4 million statewide ad pitching the proposed restrictions as “reasonable” and “commonsense.” Republicans were defeated at the polls and lost control of the state Legislature, raising Democrats’ hopes that they can win with the same message this fall.

“You can try to persuade people this is a moderate path, that 15 weeks is a good compromise and compassionate. But we were able to aggressively push back and explain to voters that a ban is a ban and exceptions don't work, and this is extremist,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “And the voters, in the end, chose to repudiate Youngkin and the Republicans.”

Trump has, so far, tried to play to both sides — floating a national ban around 15 weeks of pregnancy, while his campaign insists the former president believes it's up to voters to decide what they want at the state level.

“President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states' rights because he supports the voters' right to make decisions for themselves,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

The attempts to find a middle ground could be undermined by events that tie the GOP to stringent anti-abortion positions widely opposed by voters, such as the recent Florida Supreme Court decision clearing the way for a six-week ban, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that temporarily cut off IVF services at some clinics and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions expected in June that could roll back access to abortion pills nationwide and allow hospitals to turn away pregnant patients in a medical emergency.

Trump’s supporters and independent pollsters argue, however, that this “Art of the Deal” strategy is the best approach possible in a difficult political environment. Conservatives are unlikely to defect from the man whose Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe, while moderates who fear what a second Trump term might mean for abortion access could be mollified by talk of compromise. Even some abortion-rights leaders fear the pitch could sway low-information voters.

“This just gives a clear statement that he’s not waffling, this is where he stands on abortion, and that’s more than enough to solidify pretty much all aspects of his base,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “It may not be as much as the folks in the evangelical wing want, but he’s already proved his bona fides to them. They feel that if an even tighter ban comes up to his desk, he’s going to end up signing it.”

The GOP advocates praising Trump’s call for a 15- or 16-week ban as a “smart play” and “reasonable” are clear that they like the politics of it, not the policy — which they see as a necessary step on the path toward a more sweeping ban.

“We take the long view on these things,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, which opposes abortion. “The reality is that I have to convince people that it’s a baby at 16 weeks before I'm going to convince them that it's a baby at six weeks.”

Many on the right, including those who hope to eventually ban all abortions, argue the incremental approach is still the best path forward, given their success in toppling Roe after decades of chipping away at its protections. And, for some, any federal restrictions on abortion — which would significantly curtail the procedure in blue states like California that have become havens for abortion access — is better than the status quo.

“There are parts of the movement that believe strongly that the 15-week approach is the wrong approach because they believe that if we get federal limits of 15 weeks, it’s the most we’ll ever get,” said Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who consults with anti-abortion groups. “I’m of the part of the movement that says, ‘We want to save all of the unborn children but we want to save as many along the way as we can.’”

Yet some in the anti-abortion movement remain outraged, warning that a 15-week federal ban would allow, according to federal data, more than 90 percent of abortions to continue.

“We must not stop federal protections there, as hundreds of thousands of lives will remain at risk,” said Lila Rose, founder of the group Live Action, adding that “anything less than a complete” abortion ban would be “a violation of justice.”

The group Students for Life of America — which has deployed staff and volunteers to get out the vote in more than a dozen states heading into November — called a 15- or 16-week restriction a “bridge to nowhere.”

In a recent open letter to Trump, the group argued that only promises of a stricter ban will motivate anti-abortion voters to turn out.

“In this tight race to come, please give The Pro-Life Generation, who have seen you as a champion, something to vote for, rather than just an abortion radical to vote against,” the group’s President Kristan Hawkins wrote.

Still, many of the biggest, most politically powerful — and well-funded — anti-abortion groups are pushing for Trump to support a 15-week limit on abortion. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which has pledged to spend at least $92 million on the 2024 election, said in a statement Thursday that they “have every hope and indication President Trump will argue for a 15-week minimum standard,” praising him in advance for “protecting babies from painful late-term abortions.”

But some Trump allies, like Roger Severino, a former Trump administration official, have suggested the debate over a national abortion ban is “theoretical” at best as Republicans are unlikely to secure the 60 votes in the Senate needed to pass such a law. Instead, they believe Trump should be highlighting how he would use his executive authority to slash abortion access and undo many of Biden’s policies, like expanding access to abortion pills and paying for service members to cross state lines for abortions — a strategy they believe would appeal to most voters.

“The best indicator of what a second Trump administration would look like is found in what Trump did in his first administration, and that was install pro-life leaders to his team of appointees and to deliver in enforcing our laws, defending conscience and religious freedom, and prohibiting federal funding for abortion,” said Severino, who is now vice president of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “To get a flavor of what a second go-around would look like, you start with what Trump accomplished the first time, and he built the strongest pro-life administration in history.”

If Trump remains vague on his abortion position or only notes it in passing and doesn’t use his bully pulpit, conservatives fear Democrats will continue to be successful in defining the issue and winning over voters.

Heather Higgins, chair of the group Independent Women’s Forum, lamented, for example, that progressives have convinced much of the public that “any constraint at all, even if it's in the 39th week” is an abortion ban.

And even Trump’s explicit support for a national ban won’t be enough, anti-abortion groups stressed, if he doesn’t actively campaign on the issue in the coming months.

“You have to sell it,” said Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project. “Right now, the pro-life movement has a political crisis it's facing. Every time that the question on the ballot has been ‘All abortions or no abortions?’ voters are siding with all abortions. So we need to go on offense against the Democrats. And the real thing that's missing here is for Donald Trump to signal what his position is.”