CHICAGO (AP) — Anti-abortion leaders said Wednesday that they’re undeterred after Donald Trump said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the first time he has explicitly said so after previously refusing to answer questions on the subject.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, the Republican presidential nominee posted on his social media platform Truth Social that “everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it.”

He then said that abortion rights should be left up to the states — his most common response to questions about the issue since Roe v. Wade was overturned by a conservative majority that included three of Trump’s own appointees to the Supreme Court. In the two years since the ruling, abortion rights have emerged as a major vulnerability for the GOP, which has struggled to find a consistent message on the path forward, while driving turnout for Democrats.

With the election less than five weeks away, Trump has been trying to thread a divide between his own base of anti-abortion supporters and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. The former president is trying to make up ground with women — a group that views Democratic nominee Kamala Harris more favorably nationally — in the handful of battleground states that will likely determine the winner.

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“Trump’s statement last night is just one more example of Republicans trying desperately to rebrand themselves on the issue of abortion,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “But at the end of the day, the only thing that has actually changed is their rhetoric on the issue. It’s their reaction to seeing the political consequences for this deeply unpopular policy position.”

Major anti-abortion groups, while voicing disagreement with Trump, said they weren’t discouraged by his latest comments on a national abortion ban.

Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion Students for Life of America, said, “There are differing approaches in the pro-life movement on how best to achieve our goal.”

“Donald Trump has his own strategy to get the federal government out of the business of abortion,” she said. “We might disagree with him about the long-term goals of our movement, but in the short term, we can work with that direction.”

Hawkins added that there are other avenues Trump could use to restrict abortion nationally, including through defunding Planned Parenthood and appointing anti-abortion officials to lead major federal departments.

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said she wasn’t surprised by Trump’s remarks.

“But quite frankly, unless something really unusual happens in this election, neither side is going to have the votes in Congress to pass a national law,” she said. “So that wasn’t really at the top of our list anyway.”

Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood Votes, meanwhile, said she doesn’t believe Trump’s vow to veto a national abortion ban, calling him “a legendary flip-flopper who says whatever he thinks helps him most in that moment.” She said that even without a national abortion ban, Trump would be able to restrict abortion across the country by appointing anti-abortion judges and federal officials or reviving the Comstock Act, a 19th-century “anti-vice” law that abortion rights advocates say could imperil access to medication abortion.

Trump had not previously said whether he would veto a national ban. In fact, he repeatedly declined to say if he would veto such a ban during September’s presidential debate with Harris, although it is extremely unlikely that either political party would be able to win enough votes in Congress to pass national abortion legislation.

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In August, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said the former president would veto a national ban. But Trump demurred on the subject during the September debate, saying, “I didn’t discuss it with JD.”

The question has since lingered amid Trump’s shifting stances on the crucial issue.

Trump senior adviser Jason Miller on Tuesday rejected the idea that Trump had changed his position on the matter.

“President Trump made clear, which he’s said all along, it should be back in the states,” he told reporters after the debate. “Nothing changed. He’s always said it should be back in the states.”

Vance falsely claimed during Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national ban himself, though he said in 2022 that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and supported Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to impose a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy. In 2023, he voiced support for a “minimum national standard” for abortion, including at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Republicans have been accused of attempting to recast federal abortion restrictions as “minimum national standards” in order to distort their own stances on the issue amid the political unpopularity of the GOP’s position on abortion.

“It doesn’t matter what they call it,” Vasquez-Giroux said. “What matters is how it’s going to impact everyone that we know and love and care about. If you call it a limit or a ban, it’s the same thing, and everyday people will suffer.”

Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Voters in seven states, including conservative-leaning Kentucky, Montana and Ohio, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the past two years.

Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, has maintained that Trump would sign a national abortion ban if reelected and blamed him for the abortion restrictions in swaths of the country since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which once granted a constitutional right to abortion.

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and boasted about returning the abortion question to the states. But voters don’t have a direct say through citizen initiatives in about half of states, and in states that will have abortion on the ballot this year, anti-abortion groups and their Republican allies are using a wide array of strategies to counter proposed ballot initiatives.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

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