Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday criticized former President Donald Trump’s view that abortion rights should be determined by the states instead of the federal government.
Mr. Graham said the focus should be on the wellbeing of unborn children, not where they are born.
“I respectfully disagree with President Trump’s statement that abortion is a states’ rights issue,” Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican, said in a statement.
He said the pro-life movement “has always been about the wellbeing of the unborn child – not geography.”
“The science is clear – a child at fifteen weeks is well-developed and is capable of feeling pain,” he said. “I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks because the child is capable of feeling pain, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”
Mr. Graham also said that he will be introducing new legislation requiring abortion providers to give the fetus anesthesia if it is being aborted at 15 weeks.
He said a national abortion ban between 12 and 15 weeks is “the civilized world’s position,” saying 47 of 50 European countries have bans between those timelines.
The former president announced Monday that he thinks abortion limits should be left to the states.
“Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state,” Mr. Trump said Monday in Truth Social video. “Many states will be different.”
He said allowing states to make this decision will represent the “will of the people.”
The former president said he is in favor of exceptions to the limits in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life.
Mr. Trump said last month that he hadn’t made up his mind about what the abortion limit should be, and was considering somewhere around 15 or 16 weeks. But his statement Monday left that opinion behind.
The former president has mostly stayed away from discussing abortion, but has taken credit for playing a role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, due to his appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court.
In his statement, he also stressed the importance of allowing in vitro fertilization for couples who struggle to conceive. It’s a stance he quickly took after an Alabama court in February ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF are considered children, paving the way for wrongful death lawsuits.