Opinion: Trump can try to backpedal, but his record on abortion is clear

In an op-ed, Stephanie Jones shares her story and challenges Trump’s attempts to soften his abortion stance, highlighting the harm his policies have caused to women’s health.

The majority of Americans support a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions, and it seems like former President Donald Trump has just become aware of this fact because, during the debate and the weeks leading up to it, he has tried to distance himself from his party’s extreme stance on abortion. Make no mistake: Donald Trump is the reason thousands of women have to travel great distances for abortion care. He said it himself, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”

It’s easy for people to pigeonhole what abortion care looks like, not that it’s anyone’s business why a woman exercises her right to choose. For me, my abortion saved my life. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, I learned I was pregnant from a trip to the emergency room.  I was in so much pain that I thought my appendix had burst, but it wasn’t my appendix at risk. I was experiencing a rare type of ectopic pregnancy. The pregnancy had been growing and ruptured my uterus.

To say it was a traumatic experience would be an understatement, but I had incredible doctors, and with my right to an abortion intact in Michigan, there was no debate on whether I was sick enough or close enough to death to receive care. When I got pregnant again, I unfortunately had the exact same type of ectopic pregnancy and had to undergo another abortion. 

It was there, lying in a hospital bed after my second ectopic pregnancy and another near-death experience, that I learned from my nurse about Michigan’s extreme 1931 abortion ban and law that criminalized surrogacy and then I was spurred into advocacy. Before that moment, I took abortion access for granted – my life needed saving and my doctors did what they needed to save it, and after, I began my fight to legalize and support surrogacy in Michigan. 

I had to move to Oregon for fertility care, and eventually had my daughter in Kentucky. My experience alone shows the complications–and dire implications–of leaving abortion legislation “to the states.”

Today, in a post-Roe landscape, I’m continuing my fight but it seems that it’s only getting harder for people to decide to have children and get the care they need throughout their pregnancy, even if that care means ending the pregnancy. 

Trump stood on the debate stage next to a woman with a track record of fighting for women and reproductive rights. He hopes we will forget that he is the reason laws are in place that have led to women hemorrhaging because doctors are scared to provide lifesaving care. He is the reason states can restrict the freedoms of women and cost them their lives. We cannot ignore Trump’s record or the company he keeps with close advisors and a vice presidential candidate connected to Project 2025, which puts abortion and fertility care like IVF at risk, even though he tried to baselessly claim he was a leader in IVF. 

On the debate stage, the former president consistently, and falsely, stated that Americans wanted abortion to go back to the states, but refused to acknowledge how that is the dire reality we currently live in because of him. Trump may think that saying that he is for exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and for the life of the mother softens the reality of his stance, but those “exceptions” are hard to implement and rarely granted. In states like his home state of Florida, doctors risk prosecution if they decide that a woman’s life is at stake and provide care. 

Going through an ectopic pregnancy is traumatic, and can kill a person without medical care. Leaving it up to the states is no better than a national ban — a country where any pregnant person has to fear that they won’t be able to obtain lifesaving treatment is a country without freedom.

Related: Fact-checking Trump’s lies on abortion during the presidential debate