This Friday, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump privately shared his support for a national 16-week abortion ban with expections in cases of rape, incest, or risk to a mother’s life. This is the most recent twist in the 2024 presidential candidate’s flip-flopping record on abortion. Though the Trump campaign claims that the article was “fake news”, the Biden administration was quick to use the opportunity to further portray Biden as the presidential nominee for abortion rights.

“Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared,” the president said in a statement Friday after the story was published.

In June 2023, former President Donald Trump stated that he was the “most pro-life president ever.” He was speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Gala on the one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a decision he had largely influenced. His nomination of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court was ultimately what stripped abortion rights of all federal protections, leaving states with the power to decide over pregnant people’s right to choose.

According to TIME, just hours after the news broke that the historic ruling had been overturned on June 24, 2022, Trump sent out an email taking credit for the monumental moment himself:

“Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” he said.

Trump’s role in laying the groundwork for the current battle over abortion rights will be a pivotal topic going into the 2024 election.

But more recently, as democrats build their campaign to paint him as an enemy of reproductive rights, he has been seen publicly distancing himself from his anti-choice legacy. While this may come as a surprise, his stance on abortion has shifted many times over the years.

Trump’s “evolution” on abortion

A pinnacle of Trump’s presidential legacy is transforming the Supreme Court. The additions of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett set up the high court with the conservative majority needed to overturn Roe.

But as a real estate developer in the 1980s, his publicly expressed political views looked much different than than those of president Trump. He co-hosted a pro-choice fundraiser in 1989, and In 1999, Trump shared that he believed in a women’s right to choose on NBC’s Meet the Press, according to a 2016 Washington Post fact-checker site.

“I’m very pro-choice,” Trump said in that 1999 interview. “I hate the concept of abortion… But still, I just believe in choice.”

A decade later, his public views changed. In May 2011, Trump told the New York Times he was pro-life and by his first bid for the presidency in 2016, Trump portrayed himself as strongly pro-life, but made contradictory statements on whether women who have an abortion should be punished.

“This issue is unclear and should be put back into the states for determination. Like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement, after he said there should be “some form of punishment,” during an MSNBC town hall just hours before.

To explain the change in his stance over the years, Trump has continued to say that his views on abortion evolved, likening his “evolution” to Republican fan-favorite Reagan, who is widely considered “the father of the pro-life movement.”

“And by the way, you know who else evolved? Ronald Reagan evolved. Because Ronald Reagan signed one of the toughest abortion laws in favor of abortion in California that had been signed in many, many years… He wasn’t very conservative [passing the law as governor], but he was a pretty conservative president,” Trump said during a CNN town hall in March 2016, referencing the California Therapeutic Abortion Act that Reagan signed into law while governor of California.

The Washington Post adds context to Trump’s comparison, stating that it wasn’t viable because six years before Roe was enacted—when Reagan signed the bill—the landscape of abortion politics in America was much different.

“But this was long before abortion was a national social policy matter, before there were such terms like “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” The circumstances were a lot different then. Reagan did evolve on his abortion views, but it was less stark of a transition than Trump’s,” wrote reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee.

Trump’s abortion ‘doublespeak’

As Trump seeks the Republican presidential nomination, he has publicly embraced a more moderate stance on abortion than his party rivals.

In September, he criticized how Republicans have handled the issue of abortion—without taking a stance on a national ban himself—specifically mentioning Florida’s 6-week ban, calling it “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” and sharing how he would compromise on abortion. He also warned Republicans that strict abortion laws without exceptions for rape and incest would lose the party voters.

“I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

But in the months since, according to CNN, Trump has not centered abortion in his campaign speeches, and has not mentioned the overturning of Roe during recent rallies, causing speculation that this may be because abortion has proven to be a losing issue for pro-life republicans. 

“Trump’s ego demands he distance himself from the electorally disappointing consequences of his own actions. At first, he walked back his wholesale embrace of his role in the ruling formally known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Now he’s offering a kind of double-talk that’s intended to focus voters on how his abortion position may be less extreme than others in his party, rather than his crucial role in bringing our current reality about,” TIME senior Washington correspondent Philip Elliott wrote in Nov. 14 The D.C. Brief newsletter.