Pence Attacks Trump’s Abortion Statement as a ‘Slap in the Face’

Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a scathing rebuke to former President Donald J. Trump’s announcement on Monday that he thought abortion rights should be left to the states, calling Mr. Trump’s video statement a “slap in the face” to the anti-abortion voters who supported him in 2016 and 2020.

In a statement on social media, he described Mr. Trump as retreating on the issue and indicated that his discontent was centered on Mr. Trump’s lack of endorsement, or any mention at all, of a federal ban.

“Too many Republican politicians are all too ready to wash their hands of the battle for life,” wrote Mr. Pence, who told Fox News last month that he would not endorse his former boss after briefly running against him last year.

He repeated a line that he has said often, noting that the Trump-Pence administration “helped send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs” by nominating justices to the Supreme Court who ultimately helped overturn Roe during their tenure.

Many Republicans have shied away from backing national abortion restrictions, after the politically potent issue helped boost Democrats in the last several elections. Mr. Trump’s statement, in which he said that whatever each state decides “must be the law of the land, and in this case, the law of the state,” came after months of concern that the issue could hurt him this fall.

But Mr. Pence, an evangelical Christian who embraced abortion restrictions at the federal level shortly after Roe was overturned, has criticized fellow Republicans for their wavering stances and has said that the procedure should be outlawed in every state. Mr. Pence has long centered abortion restrictions in his political platform, dating back to his time as a congressman