After former President Donald J. Trump announced his position that abortion rights should be decided by individual states, the leading anti-abortion group supporting Republican candidates said his stance fell short.
In a statement Monday morning, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said she was “deeply disappointed” in Mr. Trump’s refusal to endorse a federal ban on abortion, adding that allowing states to decide “cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.”
“If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights,” she added.
Still, Ms. Dannenfelser said that the group and its grass-roots members will work “tirelessly” to defeat President Biden and Democrats in November.
Anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony have long endorsed a federal ban on abortion and have pushed conservative lawmakers to support one. Allowing the states to decide their own abortion measures, they argue, would make the procedure available in some states led by Democrats and lawmakers who support abortion access.
Individual Republicans also weighed in on Mr. Trump’s announcement. In a rare rebuff of the former president, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also criticized his stance, saying he disagreed with the assertion that abortion rights should be considered “a states’ rights issue.”
The “movement has always been about the well-being of the unborn child — not geography,” Mr. Graham said in a statement, adding that Mr. Trump’s position “will age about as well as the Dred Scott decision” — a Supreme Court ruling that denied enslaved people full American citizenship.
Mr. Trump hit back, accusing Mr. Graham in a post on his social media site of shifting his stance for political convenience while also calling him “unrelenting” in a way that will help Democrats win elections.
Penny Nance, the president and chief executive of Concerned Women for America, a conservative policy advocacy group, said in a statement on Monday that she, too, preferred a federal ban on abortion but still endorsed Mr. Trump for president, saying that he “gave us three constitutionalist justices, 220 lower court judges, appointees who support life and the overturn of Roe v Wade.”
Some conservative groups were supportive of Mr. Trump’s stance.
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life Action, a group that trains and supports young anti-abortion organizers, called the former president’s statement “a step in the right direction,” and said she was encouraged by his refusal to call for “a divisive late-term limit.” She maintained that the group still supports a federal ban and added, “your state lines should never mean the beginning or end of your human rights.”