WASHINGTON, Aug 30, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Donald Trump has been accused of
deserting the anti-abortion movement as he seeks to negate attacks by Kamala
Harris over one of the most polarizing issues of the US election.

The Republican nominee brags often about his role in overturning the
constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

But -- under relentless fire from Harris and the Democratic Party, and with a
majority of Americans supporting access to the procedure -- the former
president is now risking the ire of his right-wing base by claiming to
promote "reproductive rights."

"Trump's abandonment of Pro-Lifers is complete," said a headline in the
conservative National Review last week.

Jeremy Boreing, the co-founder of right-wing website The Daily Wire, attacked
the former president as "philosophically malleable."

"His first term was perhaps the most pro-life in actual effect of any
administration in our history. That is his legacy -- if he will keep it,"
Boreing said on X.

The backlash came after Trump took to his Truth Social platform last week to
target Democrats, who had for days been attacking him over abortion at their
national convention in Chicago.

"My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights," he
wrote, hours after Harris accused him and the Republican Party of being "out
of their minds" as she used her convention speech to criticize their abortion
stance.

Trump's post was "the worst statement Donald Trump has made" since he
launched his campaign for president in 2015, Boreing said.

It was "hard to interpret in any other way than as an affirmatively pro-
choice statement," wrote Philip Klein, editor of the National Review Online,
referring to abortion rights.

"By the common usage of the term, if you support reproductive rights it means
you want broader access to abortion."

- 'Beyond this Trump moment' -

Conservatives -- along with everyone else -- have long grappled with how to
understand Trump's stance on abortion, which has shifted often over the
years.

His stacking of the Supreme Court with justices handpicked for their abortion
views allowed it to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that had enshrined
the procedure as a right.

That seismic move in 2022 made him a hero to many in the anti-abortion
movement, which had driven conservative voters to the polls for decades.

"I was able to kill Roe v. Wade," he wrote in a Truth Social post last year.
"Without me, the pro Life movement would have just kept losing."

But since then the issue has become an electoral problem for the Republican
Party, firing up voters in many local, state and national elections to back
Democrats, who have vowed to restore Roe.

Meanwhile the anti-abortion movement is pushing Trump to go further, with
some decrying fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and
others focused on demanding an unpopular national abortion ban.

Trump has appeared to want it both ways, dodging the question of a ban by
insisting repeatedly that "everyone" wanted individual states to make their
own decisions on abortion, even as he accuses Harris and the Democrats of
"executing" babies.

In another Truth Social post last week he also called the Republican Party a
"leader" on IVF.

He announced Thursday -- without any details on funding -- that as president
he would mandate free IVF treatments for any Americans who wanted it.

He also suggested in an interview with NBC that he would vote to overturn
Florida's ban on abortions after six weeks' pregnancy, which was "too short."
His campaign then quickly walked this back, saying Trump did not actually
specify how he'd vote when the referendum takes place in his home state in
November.

Trump will "further alienate pro-lifers and divide his own party while doing
absolutely zero to win over anybody pro-choice," Klein wrote in the National
Review.

That doesn't mean that conservatives will suddenly start voting for Harris,
but for many on the right it appears to be time to move on.

"The cause is way bigger and younger than Donald Trump," Marjorie
Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-
abortion non-profit, told AFP.

"It will shape the (Republican Party) beyond this Trump moment."