Conned

Women won’t be ‘conned’ by Trump’s abortion dance, Sen. Tina Smith says

“We know that he is the one who is responsible for what’s going on in Arizona and all over the country,” Smith said.

By KELLY GARRITY

Donald Trump said earlier this month that he believes that abortion access should be left to the states in the post-Roe era, declining to back a specific limit on when a woman could get an abortion.

But women won’t be fooled over his real intentions, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said Sunday.

“American women are not going to be conned by Donald Trump and his comments about abortion. We know that he is the one who is responsible for what’s going on in Arizona and all over the country,” she said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” in reference to an Arizona Supreme Court ruling upholding the validity of a 160-year-old law outlawing abortions unless the patient’s life is in danger. That ruling, Trump said days after he released his official stance on abortion rights, went too far.

“I think it’ll be straightened out and, as you know, it’s all about states’ rights and it will be straightened out,” the former president said when asked if Arizona’s ruling went too far. “And I’m sure the governor and everybody else have got to bring it back into reason and that it will be taken care of, I think.”

In the video announcing his position on the divisive issue, Trump did not rule out signing a national abortion ban. And he didn’t mention executive actions he could take without Congress that could curb access to abortion, even in blue states.

Smith, meanwhile, is trying to secure access to abortion medications like mifepristone for people across the country. The Minnesota Democrat is working to repeal the Comstock Act, a set of federal laws passed in 1873 to ban mail delivery of “lewd or lascivious material,” which abortion foes have said should be used to block abortion drugs and contraceptives from being sent through the mail today.

“This is a 150-year-old law that has been long relegated to the dust bin of history, and yet we can see Trump judges, and even the United States Supreme Court, raising this up as a reason why people shouldn’t be able to get medication abortion through the mail,” Smith said Sunday.