When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the GOP presidential primary and tossed his support to former President Donald Trump, he appeared to be doing Trump a significant favor. He also welcomed Trump as the newest permanent resident of the Free State of Florida, with Mar-a-Lago hosting many political shindigs for conservative dignitaries. Yet one of the most sweeping reforms implemented in Florida under DeSantis has turned into a serious thorn in Trump's side this week. The Florida Governor ushered in a near-total ban on abortions beginning at approximately six weeks of pregnancy, one of the most restrictive in the nation. The ban was challenged and a referendum on pushing the limit out to the point of fetal viability outside the womb (approximately 24 weeks) will be on the ballot in November. As a newly minted citizen of the Sunshine State, Trump will be eligible to vote on the measure but he has visibly struggled when reporters have asked him how he plans to vote. It seems as if there is no good answer Trump can give that won't tick off some group of his potential supporters. (USA Today)

The biggest conservative policy success of former President Donald Trump's term in office may also be his 2024 campaign's undoing: the overturning of Roe v Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that had protected abortion rights for half a century. That has left the field open for proposed state and federal abortion restrictions that leave Trump in a bind.

Trump has tried to avoid embracing his party's most unpopular policies during the 2024 campaign while also placating anti-abortion advocates.

The former president doesn't endorse a national ban on abortion, which his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio has been open to in the past, but he brags about appointing the U.S. Supreme Court justices who made sweeping new abortion restrictions possible in many states when they overturned Roe.

To be clear, Trump is far from the only Republican who is struggling with these questions. Abortion is the one issue where the Democrats hold a significant polling advantage over conservative Republicans and they are hammering it for all they are worth. Trump loves to brag about how he was the one who appointed the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that sent the abortion question back to the states where it belonged all along. He has since come out and said that he would not sign a federal ban on abortion into law, preferring instead to follow the lead of SCOTUS and leave the question up to the states. That's a great answer when it comes to the overarching constitutional questions involved in this, but it was never going to be enough.

Tossing the question back to the states means that different states will choose different courses of action, including Trump's new home state of Florida. As one of the state's newer residents, Trump will be eligible to vote on the ballot measure and it's legitimate for reporters to ask him how he plans to vote. Unfortunately, in a relatively short period of time, Trump has given multiple answers. He first said on Thursday that he supported the measure because "there has to be more time" than just six weeks. This drove the Right to Life crowd nuts as you might expect. By Thursday evening, a Trump spokesperson said that he was still undecided. When he was asked again on Friday, Trump backtracked and said that he would oppose the ballot initiative. This at least seems to imply that Trump supports keeping the six-week ban in place, contrary to what he said only one day before.

Kamala Harris was quick to jump all over Trump's reversal, accusing him of supporting a ban that is so restrictive it would take effect "before some women even know they are pregnant." (Unfortunately, that is true. These are known as "cryptic pregnancies" or "stealth pregnancies" and they can be the result of a variety of factors.) There is nothing that the hard left would love to see more than the pro-life coalition splintering away from Trump in the final weeks before the election. But cozying up to that group too closely puts Trump at risk of losing support among female voters who favor fewer restrictions on abortion by significant margins over their male counterparts. 

From the moment that the Supremes shot down Roe, we knew this issue was going to pose significant problems for Republicans in the 2024 campaign cycle. Too many of them simply haven't figured out a way to walk that tightrope and the liberal legacy media is more than willing to hammer the question endlessly. You might imagine that conservative voter groups such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America would be able to see past this mess. After all, who are they going to vote for besides Trump? The woman who supports abortions up until the day of delivery? Unfortunately, they don't have to make that choice. If they are truly single-issue voters, they could simply stay at home in November. The damage to Trump's campaign would essentially be the same either way.