WASHINGTON – Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, suggested in a taped interview with a Pittsburgh television news station Tuesday that he might be open to states restricting access to contraceptives, but he later appeared to backtrack.
“We’re looking into that and I’ll have a policy on that shortly, and I think that’s something you’ll find interesting,” Trump said on KDKA. “It is another topic that is very interesting. But you will find it very clever. I think it’s a wise decision, but we will release it very soon.”
Trump was asked if he supported “any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception.”
Trump later added: “Things really depend a lot on the states. And some states have different guidelines than others.” He made the comment shortly after he was asked if he would “maybe want to support some restrictions, like the morning-after pill or something like that?”
The former president, who is currently in court for allegedly facilitating hush money payments to an adult film actress as part of his 2016 campaign to cover up a previous affair. He later posted on his social media platform that he does not support restrictions on birth control.
“I have never advocated and never will impose restrictions on contraception or other forms of contraception,” Trump wrote. “This is a lie, MISINFORMATION/DISINFORMATION, made up by the Democrats because all they have is failure, poverty and death. I do not support banning birth control and neither does the Republican Party!”
Supreme Court Rulings
The U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of privacy law in contraceptive decisions, meaning any state seeking to limit or ban access to birth control would quickly find that law challenged in federal court.
In Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 caseRejecting a Connecticut law that barred married couples from using contraceptives, the justices wrote that “the right to privacy can be derived from several amendments to the Bill of Rights and that right prevents states from requiring married couples to use contraceptives.” “illegal.”
The Supreme Court later ruled in Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972 case that the same privacy rights that protected married couples in making decisions about contraception also protected unmarried people.
In that case, the justices ruled that “unmarried couples have the right to use contraception based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the more nebulous constitutional right to privacy.”
Biden-Harris spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika released a written statement on Tuesday saying Trump’s comments showed he “wants to take away our freedom to access contraception.”
“Women across the country are already suffering from Donald Trump’s post-Roe nightmare, and if he wins a second term, it’s clear he wants to go even further by restricting access to contraceptives and emergency contraceptives,” Chitika wrote. “It’s not enough for Trump to put women’s lives at risk, threaten doctors with prison sentences, and enact extreme bans with no exceptions for rape or incest.”
Jon Delano, money and politics editor at KDKA-TV posted on social media that viewers interested in the Trump interview could tune in to “4, 5 and 6” to hear commentary on the trial, abortion, contraceptives, the economy, energy, trade and the fairness of the PA election .
The Biden campaign Posted excerpts from the interview on her social media account, but it didn’t appear to be available anywhere else before KDKA’s broadcast.
More political hints from Trump
Trump has tried to present clear policy plans before, as he told Time magazine in April interview that his campaign would release details of his “strong views” on access to mifepristone in the coming weeks. As of Tuesday afternoon, the campaign had not done so.
The drug is one of two drugs used in medical abortion and is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The judge heard oral presentations They will hear the case in March and are expected to decide this summer whether to maintain the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prescribing guidelines or revert to the guidelines in place before the changes took effect in 2016.
Trump said during the Time magazine interview that he would not offer his views on access to mifepristone at this time.
“Well, I have an opinion about it, but I’m not going to explain it,” Trump said Transcript of the interview. “I’m not going to say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on it. And I’ll probably release it over the next week.”
