As former President Donald Trump blinks on the abortion debate, his likely top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is taking an opportunity to fight him on a key 2024 election issue that is shaping up to be as divisive in the Republican primary as it will be in the general.
DeSantis, who is expected to publicly announce his presidential plans in the coming weeks, took a direct swing at Trump on Tuesday after the current GOP presidential frontrunner suggested that Florida’s new six-week abortion ban was “too harsh.”
Asked about that remark, DeSantis said the legislation he signed is something that “probably 99% of pro-lifers support.”
The governor noted that Trump had dodged on whether he would back that bill.
“As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘Would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did, that had all the exceptions that people talk about?'” he said.
“The Legislature put it in, I signed the bill, I was proud to do it,” DeSantis said, adding, “He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not.”
The governor’s remarks at a bill-signing event marked a rare rebuttal to Trump, who has spent months bludgeoning his potential primary rival with attacks that have mostly gone unanswered.
Trump was a main catalyst for last year’s lethal blow to federal abortion rights, as he appointed three of the conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. That seismic ruling made good on Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to put abortion regulations back in the hands of the states.
It was the biggest-ever win for conservatives whose opposition to abortion protections has been a rallying cry for decades. But it drew a ferocious backlash.
Many voters, incensed by the sudden loss of what had been a constitutional right for nearly five decades, flocked to the polls in the November midterms, and pro-abortion rights Democrats broadly outperformed expectations that had strongly favored Republicans. Surveys showed the high court’s ruling…
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