Trump addresses conservative Christians who want to see him go further on banning abortion

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump gave the keynote speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "2024 Road to Majority" conference in Washington on Saturday, speaking to an evangelical group whose advocacy for a national abortion ban conflicts with Trump's policy statements on the issue.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has walked a tight rope in his remarks on abortion restrictions, which Democrats see as a liability for the GOP going into November. Earlier this year, he declined to endorse a national abortion ban, saying the issue should be left to the states to decide.

"The people will decide, and that’s the way it should be. The people are now deciding," Trump said Saturday, referring to legislation at the state level.

The former president, however, has waffled on the abortion issue for decades, referring to himself as pro-choice” and “pro-life” at various times. On Saturday, he repeated that he supported exceptions that allow abortion when the mother's life is at risk as well as in cases of rape and incest.

"I think most people do, actually, but some people don’t," Trump said. "You have to go with your heart, but you have to also remember, you have to get elected.”

Despite their differences with Trump on a national ban, Christian conservatives make up a key part of the former president's support base, and they have lauded his nomination of three Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the federal constitutional right to an abortion.

The former president on Saturday took a victory lap for nominatingthose justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — and thanked the court's conservative majority for "for the wisdom and the