Trump says GOP is the ‘party of fertilization,’ seems unaware of Michigan’s abortion amendment

Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Freeland, Michigan. | Kyle Davidson

Calling the Republican Party the “party of fertilization,” former President Trump continues to make false claims in a recent interview with a Detroit TV station, while simultaneously taking credit for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

In an interview last week with FOX-2 Detroit following his Wednesday rally in Saginaw County, anchor Roop Raj asked Trump about the issue of abortion and how much it would impact the November election. The former president argued that the erasure of a 50-year precedent that provided women a constitutional right to an abortion was a positive development.

“I say what the people decide, and whatever it is, it’s within the state and what the people decide, and it’s working out,” said Trump. “For many, many years, people have said we’ve gotta bring this back to the states to decide, and that’s now working.”

Trump then outlined how different states were dealing with abortion rights, but appeared unaware that Michigan had already enshrined those rights in its constitution.

“All the states are deciding, and you know, for 53 years, people wanted to be able to get it out, Roe v Wade, get it out so the states can decide,” Trump said. “Your state [Michigan] will decide probably a liberal policy if it hasn’t already done it. … I think Michigan’s gonna actually be very loose. They’re gonna vote on it, and that’s gonna be the law.”

In 2022, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved securing the right to an abortion and other reproductive rights, less than six months after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause no longer provided a federal right to an abortion. Three of the six votes in favor of that decision were made by justices appointed to the court by Trump.

Pro-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Proposal 3 sign in Ann Arbor, Nov. 8, 2022 | Laina G. Stebbins

Trump also told Raj the GOP was “the party of fertilization because we are for the women,” referencing one of the issues that resulted from the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, namely in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“We wanna help the women because they were gonna end fertilization, which is where when the IVF, where women go to the clinics and they get help in having a baby, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. And we’re for it a 100%. They tried to say that they weren’t for it. They actually weren’t for it and aren’t for it as much as us, but women see that,” said Trump.

The IVF issue came to the forefront in February when the Alabama Supreme Court, citing the Dobbs decision nine times, ruled that embryos had the full legal rights of citizens. That left IVF clinics facing costly litigation, prompting a temporary halt to the procedure in that state until it passed a law extending criminal and civil immunity to IVF providers and patients. But because the measure didn’t declare when life begins, clinics there are still moving away from providing the service out of litigation concerns.

Trump’s claim that “they weren’t for it,” presumably meaning the Democratic Party, is false. In fact, Democrats like U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois — a disabled veteran who used IVF to become a mother — had been warning since at least 2022 that IVF would be the next target of GOP-led legislatures and courts if Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

Additionally, Senate Republicans have rejected attempts to protect access to IVF treatments, while a bill sponsored by House Democrats, H.R. 7056, the Access to Family Building Act, which would establish a federal right to access assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, remains bottled up in committee by the Republican-led chamber.

Trump continued to insist in the interview that abortion “was not that big of an issue,” and “should be largely taken off the table.”

He also continued to push the false claim that abortions were routinely being done in the final month of pregnancy, or beyond.

“Nobody wants to see abortions in the ninth month and the eighth month and the seventh month, and nobody wants to see abortions or, in this case, killing after the baby is born,” Trump told Raj. “Right now, that’s what the Democrats can do. They can have it in the seventh, eighth, ninth month, and they can kill the baby. In numerous states, they can kill the baby after the baby is born, and nobody wants that. Nobody.”

Since at least 2016, Trump has been making the claim of abortions in the final days of pregnancy or even killing babies after they are born, and it has been fact-checked time and again as false.

And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than 1% of all abortions are performed after 21 weeks of gestation — in the fifth month of pregnancy..

Raj asked Trump about Florida’s six-week abortion ban that went into effect last week.

“You have to understand, every legal scholar from all over the country, all over the world, they said ‘You have to get abortion out of the federal government, you have to take it away from the federal government, give it to the states’, and now that’s what we’ve been able to do. We’ve given it to the states, and some states have already decided, and people are satisfied with it.”

While there were certainly scholars who believed Roe had been decided incorrectly, they didn’t represent a majority, much less anything close to unanimity.

“Any claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,” Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, a legal scholar who supported the preservation of Roe, told CNN, which quoted several other legal experts in fact-checking that assertion as false.

“The people within the states … they seem to be very happy with the way it’s working out,” added Trump.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, since the overturning of Roe, 30 states have enacted abortion policies that range from restrictive to the most restrictive.

Raj also asked Trump about labor policies, unions, immigration and the war against Hamas in Gaza.

When asked about the success of union efforts in southern states, such as the UAW’s historic victory last month with Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., who voted by a nearly 3-1 margin to join the UAW, Trump instead talked about China building car plants in Mexico, insisted the public didn’t want all electric vehicles (EVs) and ended up in a diatribe against President Joe Biden.

“This character that’s destroyed our country, the worst president we’ve ever had, without question,” said Trump. “He’s destroying our country. What he’s doing with cars, he’s forcing the auto industry into China and other countries, and it’s so sad. And, by the way, Mexico is doing things that nobody can believe. They just started, and they’re doing them in conjunction with China, and it’s gotta be stopped. We can’t let that happen.”

Raj restated his question about growing union support in states like Tennessee that have been less than welcoming to organized labor in the past. 

“Well, it could be happening,” Trump said. “I mean, it’s gonna be happening, but you gotta be very careful about what’s gonna happen in two years from now when China wants to take all of the jobs. Because frankly, then union or non-union, everybody’s gonna be hurt. Everybody.”

There have been concerns about Chinese automakers looking to avoid U.S. tariffs by building vehicles in Mexico and the Biden administration has addressed the issue. Last month, Reuters reported that under pressure from the U.S., Mexico was refusing to offer Chinese automakers incentives to build factories there such as low-cost public land or tax cuts for investment in EV production. 

The report also quoted an official with the Office of the United States Trade Representative as saying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was negotiated during the Trump Administration, did not allow “a back door to China and others who may be seeking to access our market without paying … tariffs.”

On the topic of Israeli military attacks against Hamas in Gaza, in which more than 34,000 people have been killed according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, Trump was asked how he would try and end the hostilities, and indicated he would give Israel a free hand.

A general view over the Gaza Strip as seen from the Israeli side of the border on January 8, 2024 in Southern Israel. | Amir Levy/Getty Images

“You gotta finish it off fast. You gotta get it done, and then you gotta have peace. And we’ll make peace fast. But you gotta get your work done and you gotta have peace. You know that Oct. 7 was terrible,” Trump said, referring to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians that killed about 1,200 people. 

The interview closed with Raj asking Trump if he would debate Biden on statewide television in Michigan.

“If you can get him, I’m there. I’ll go anywhere he wants to go,” said Trump. “What he’s done to Michigan is so bad. What he’s done to our country is so bad. What other man, what other person, would allow 15, 16 million people right now in our country? They came from prisons and jails. They came from insane asylums and mental institutions, not from South America, from all over the world, they’re pouring into our country at levels that nobody’s ever seen. Drug dealers. One stat before we go, Venezuela was very crime-ridden. They announced the other day 72% reduction in crime in the last year. You know why? They moved all their criminals from Venezuela right into the good old USA, and Biden let them do it. It’s a disgrace.”

“But, sir, where are those numbers coming from?” asked Raj.

“I guess I get them from the papers in this case. I think it’s a federal statement or well, they’re coming actually from Venezuela. They’re coming from Venezuela. That’s where they can’t come from,” said Trump.

Punishing sanctions imposed against Venezuela during the Trump administration have been blamed as at least one cause of the mass migration out of that nation. Trump also didn’t mention that one of his last acts as President was to give Venezuelan exiles in the U.S. illegally protection from deportation. 

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