Trump 2024: Abort!

As with so many things, Donald Trump tried to have it both ways on the abortion issue.

He put out a video statement expressing pride in being instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade and also advocating that whatever the people of the fifty states decide on abortion for their own jurisdictions should be the law in the respective states, refusing to endorse a national abortion ban. His attempt to please everyone pleased no one.  But his insistence that the federal government should let the people of each state decide - what Illinois senator Stephen Douglas once called "popular sovereignty" in defending the right of the people to decide whether their states should allow slavery - was a defensible position.

Until it wasn't.

Right after Trump made that statement, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an extremely restrictive  abortion law passed in the state in 1864 - when Arizona was still a territory and before women could vote - is enforceable.  As soon as the decision was handed down, Trump said that Arizona had gone too far and urged the state legislature to repeal it.  Which isn't possible, as Republicans in the Arizona legislature blocked an effort to do so.  So much for popular sovereignty.      

Trump had no problem with the right so the states to decide on abortion until Arizona made a decision he didn't like.  When Stephen Douglas said that the people in the territories had a right to decide whether to enter the Union as free states or slave states and Kansas voted to become a free state, did Douglas object to the decision?  No.  Even though he curried support from Southerners for his presidential ambitions and even though he and his Southern wife owned a plantation in Mississippi, he stood by Kansas' decision to enter the Union as a free state - and it cost him Southern support, support from President James Buchanan and, ultimately, the Presidency.  Say what you will about Stephen Douglas - racist, craven politician, bad senator - no one ever said he was inconsistent, which is what Donald Trump has been for all of his political life.

There's another difference between Trump and Douglas.  When there was an insurrection shortly after Abraham Lincoln became President, Douglas famously called for all patriotic Americans to "rally 'round the flag."  And Trump . . . you know the rest.