US Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Donald Trump of trying to have it “both ways” with in vitro fertilisation (IVF), two days after the former president promised to force health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments if elected in November.
Speaking on MSNBC, Warren said Trump was simply tailoring his positions according to what he perceived to be the preferences of his audience.
“So when she thinks she’s speaking to her radical base, she says, ‘How radical do they need me to be? ’” Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Saturday.
“Donald Trump will go further, but when he speaks to the overwhelming majority of Americans, who are strongly opposed to this radical approach to abortion and IVF, he tries to change his tone and then is surprised when now all sides start criticizing him for it.”
The Republican candidate for November’s presidential election has recast his position on IVF as a staunch defender of the expensive treatment, a characterization Democrats reject and accuse him of changing his position only after American voters expressed broad support for reproductive rights.
Similarly, Democrats accuse Trump of changing his stance on abortion rights. On Friday, he said he would vote against a ballot measure in his home state of Florida that would protect abortion rights beyond six weeks, after facing backlash from his conservative supporters.
A day earlier, Trump had rankled anti-abortion activists when he told NBC News he supported the measure. “It takes longer than six weeks,” said Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about how his three U.S. Supreme Court appointees created a conservative supermajority that eliminated federal abortion rights in 2022.
“I have disagreed with that since the first primaries, when I first learned about it.”
Kamala Harris issued a statement saying her opponent “just made her position on abortion very clear.”
“He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme that it applies before many women even know they are pregnant,” Harris said.
On Saturday, Warren accused Trump of playing games with IVF.
She said: “Are you kidding me? He also supports – and it’s on his platform – that IVF should be effectively banned across the United States. Sorry Donald, you can’t have it both ways.”
Warren also accused the former president of lacking principles, which is why, she said, women do not trust him.
“There is no principle for him beyond ‘Does this help Donald Trump?’” Warren said. “That is his only guiding principle, and American women are just criticizing him and saying we’re not going to trust Donald Trump.”
