Ban abortion nationwide

Biden claims Trump will do “everything to ban abortion nationwide”

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

Biden said Monday that “Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide. Oh, he will.”

Facts First: Biden is making a prediction that we cannot definitively fact check, but the claim does not reflect Trump’s most recent comments on abortion and needs context.

While Trump regularly boasts that he played a key role in getting the US Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the country, Trump says it should be up to the states to decide how and when to restrict abortion. Polls show that the majority of Americans are against a federal abortion ban.

Throughout this most recent campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly ducked direct questions about his support for a federal ban on abortions, but he said in April that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected to the White House again. That statement reversed what he said in 2016 when he was first running for the presidency and was the opposite of statements he made throughout his time in office.

Some scholars are concerned that conservative advisers to Trump have encouraged him to ban abortions by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act, a method that could essentially create a federal ban without Trump needing to sign any legislation to do it.

The Victorian-era anti-vice law that is still on the books is not currently enforced. The law bans the mailing of “obscene” materials used to produce an abortion. Some scholars believe Trump could use the Justice Department to enforce a ban that would not just restrict people from sending the medication currently used in the majority of abortions through the mail, but would ban any kind of materials used to produce any kind of abortion.

Trump has not officially endorsed the enforcement of the Comstock Act, but it is a strategy some of his advisers have outlined as an option for Trump to restrict abortions nationwide.