Former Vice President Mike Pence said this week that former President Donald Trump was failing the conservative movement due to his recent statement accepting certain uses of abortion. The criticism comes just weeks after the former vice president announced that he would not be endorsing Trump in the 2024 election.
Pence wrote on social media that Trump’s recent statement that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape, incest and for the life of the mother was a “retreat on the Right to Life.”
The former vice president said that it was a “slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020.”
“By nominating and standing by the confirmation of conservative justices, the Trump-Pence Administration helped send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and gave the pro-life movement the opportunity to compassionately support women and unborn children,” wrote Pence.
President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020. By nominating and standing by the confirmation of conservative justices, the Trump-Pence Administration helped send Roe v. Wade to the…
— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) April 8, 2024
Pence argued that a “majority” of the public desires “minimum national protections for the unborn in federal law.”
However, the former vice president wrote that “too many Republican politicians are all too ready to wash their hands of the battle for life.”
He further wrote that Republican candidates win when they argue against abortion.
“However much our Republican nominee or other candidates seek to marginalize the cause of life, I know pro-life Americans will never relent until we see the sanctity of life restored to the center of American law in every state in this country,” Pence wrote.
The former president said that the decision regarding abortion should be up to the state, including differences regarding abortion limits depending on the length of the pregnancy.
Trump argued that “at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people.”
The former president’s statement put the two former running mates at odds again. Earlier this year Pence announced that he would not support Trump, in part due to differences regarding the threat posed by China and the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the Capitol.
