Trump is right: Abortion is best decided by states. Now he needs to be consistent.

After making voters guess for months what his abortion stance would be, former President Donald Trump announced on social media Monday that he doesn’t support a national ban on abortion. 

Trump’s right on this one.

“At the end of the day, this is all about will of the people,” Trump said in a video statement on Truth Social. 

The hard part for him now, however, will be to stay consistent. 

Abortion became a states’ rights issue after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and states across the country have taken vastly different stances on reproductive rights. 

That is exactly what was supposed to happen once the federal constitutional right to abortion disappeared, so it makes sense that Trump would want to leave the abortion debate to the states. 

By taking the immediate threat of a national ban off the table, Trump also may help bring down the temperature of the abortion rights discussion and make it less of a pressing issue heading into the presidential election. 

Democrats want the election to be about abortion

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have pinned a lot of their reelection strategy to fearmongering on abortion. They hope to harness the pro-abortion rights momentum that the country saw after Roe was overturned. 

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They also want to distract voters from the fact that Biden is too old and unpopular, and that many voters have moved on to other issues, from immigration to the economy to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. 

Elections in 2022 and 2023 overwhelmingly saw voters, even in red states, come out in favor of expanded abortion access. States such as Michigan and Ohio have passed constitutional amendments ensuring broad access to abortion.

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This year will be the true test to abortion’s staying power as a motivator for liberal-leaning voters. 

Voters in increasingly-red Florida, for instance, will decide on an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot, just as the state Supreme Court recently allowed a new six-week abortion ban to take effect. 

Democrats hope that having that issue on the ballot will turn things in their favor by encouraging a strong turnout of their supporters and give Biden better odds in a key state that Trump won twice.

We’ll see. 

What does Trump actually believe on abortion?

Trump’s messaging on abortion is about as mercurial as one would expect coming from the former reality TV star. His abortion “stance” seems to be tied to where the political winds are blowing rather than to any personal conviction. 

Trump’s gone from being “very pro-choice” in the late 1990s to declaring himself the “most pro-life president in American history” after Roe was overturned.

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After all, Trump appointed the three Supreme Court justices who made that ruling possible.

Since then, however, Trump has criticized Republicans for not getting their messaging right after the Roe decision and has warned that cracking down too hard on abortion rights would backfire. For instance, Trump said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a “terrible mistake” when he signed the six-week ban last year. 

Trump also has consistently supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and threat to the mother's health.

That has confounded some of Trump’s pro-life supporters. Yet, if the choice is between pro-abortion rights Biden and Trump, the anti-abortion crowd will surely side with Trump. 

Politically speaking, Trump is smart to take a national abortion ban off the table and keep hammering on the issues that are driving Americans’ concerns in 2024. 

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques