Former President Donald Trump alluded to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in asking attendees of a Christian forum to vote for him on Monday.
In a two-minute virtual address to the Danbury Institute, the former president did not mention abortion explicitly, as he has in other campaign speeches. But he did make a passing reference to defending “innocent life” and told attendees of the sold-out event in Indianapolis, hosted in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention, that he hoped he “earned” their vote in his first term.
“We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world,” Trump said in a prerecorded video.
“I know that each of you is protecting those values every day — and I hope we’ll be defending them side by side for the next four years,” Trump added.
It’s the latest sign of the tightrope Trump is walking on a topic that Democrats have used to put Republicans on defense in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
After a decadeslong effort by anti-abortion activists, Trump delivered on their long-held campaign to strike down the court ruling and end the national right to abortion. But the former president has also sought to neutralize it as a campaign matter by announcing in April that restrictions should be left up to the states.
The Danbury Institute, meanwhile, is unequivocal in its opposition to abortion.
“More than 60 million pre-born humans, each wonderfully made in the image of God, have been murdered on our watch,” its website reads. “Abortion must be ended. We will not rest until it is eradicated entirely.”
“I want to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous devotion to God and to country and your tremendous support of me, and I hope I’ve earned it,” Trump told the forum, “because we’ve done things that nobody thought were possible to have gotten done.”
Democrats have seized on the matter, especially in battleground districts and states, in a bid to paint Republicans as anti-women. The House Majority PAC announced a $100 million campaign to galvanize voters around abortion access to help Democrats take back control of the GOP-led House.
At the presidential level, President Joe Biden’s campaign slammed Trump for addressing the forum in a statement released to reporters.
“If you want to know who Trump will fight for in a second term, look at who he’s spending his time speaking to, anti-abortion extremists who call abortion ‘child sacrifice’ and want to ‘eradicate’ abortion ‘entirely,'” Biden spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said.
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Trump framed the November election as a chance to preserve the wins evangelicals celebrated during his first term. He called on attendees to show up on Election Day as he faces Biden for a second time in what is expected to be a close election.
“Now is the time for us to all pull together and to stand up for our values and for our freedoms, and you just can’t vote Democrat. They’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular,” Trump claimed. “You cannot vote for Democrats, and you have to get out and vote.”
David Sivak contributed to this report.
