Two things happened that changed Trump’s standing with voters on the matter. The first was at a rally in Michigan, where Trump announced that his administration would work to make IVF treatments free, either through government support or a mandate that insurance covers the procedure. The second occurred shortly after, in an interview, where he seemed to indicate that he was going to vote in favor of a Florida constitutional amendment that would allow abortion up to birth.

The amendment was drafted in response to a law that prohibits abortion after six weeks, which is roughly when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. In the interview, Trump said, “I think the six weeks is too short. There has to be more time,” before adding, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”

The response was immediately seen as Trump indicating that he would vote in favor of the amendment, but shortly after the interview clip went viral, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the former president “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida” and “he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”

I have consistently argued that Trump needs room to be pragmatic on the abortion matter and that this pragmatism is necessary to pursue the ultimate goal of banning abortion. Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the matter has become an electoral liability for Republicans in a number of swing states, and Republican voters are proving themselves to be hardly as pro-life as was assumed prior to the overturn of Roe. In fact, every single pro-life referendum since the fall of Roe has failed, even in the reddest of states such as Kentucky and Montana.

Up until this point, Trump has done a good job of appealing to a pragmatic position on abortion. He has consistently emphasized the abortion extremism of the Democratic Party and its allies at Planned Parenthood. But in his bid to neutralize an electoral liability, Trump is running so far in the opposite direction that he risks alienating his pro-life base. Yet he cannot win the presidency without these voters.

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Evangelical and other religious pro-life voters, such as Catholics, supported him in 2016 and 2020 in large part because of his promise to enact pro-life policies and appoint pro-life judges to the federal courts. These voters are a key part of the coalition that makes up the base of the Republican Party. And while most of them will still vote for Trump on Election Day, if even a small number of these voters decide to stay home or vote for a third-party candidate, it could cost Trump the election in a close race.

Advocating government-mandated IVF insurance coverage and opposing pro-life causes at the state level are not pragmatic positions. These are positions that are fundamentally pro-abortion and anti-religious freedom. Trump needs to return to a pragmatic position that appeals to the middle without alienating his base, otherwise he runs the risk of losing voters without whom he cannot win the election.