BBC Quotes Professor Ziegler About Trump's Hedging on Abortion

Professor Mary Ziegler spoke to the BBC on Sept. 19 about backlash former President and current 2024 GOP front-runner Donald Trump received from abortion opponents for calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban “a terrible mistake.”

The story addresses how Republicans are struggling with stating positions on abortion that will placate their base without alienating the broader electorate.

"Trump's general thesis seems to be that he's going to win the Republican nomination no matter what he says or does," Zieger told the BBC. His hedging on abortion "is clearly a general election message, not a primary message."

Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate.