Biden and Trump Clash Over Abortion in First Presidential Debate

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump clashed over abortion in the first presidential debate for the 2024 election Thursday night.

The two candidates traded barbs with one another when CNN moderator Dana Bash asked where they stood on abortion early on in the debate. Biden committed to restoring Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that protected the right to abortion in the U.S. in 1973 and was overturned in 2022. Meanwhile, Trump, who has said that he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban but would let states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute people who violate their restrictive laws, applauded the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe while adding that he would support exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

“It’s bringing it back to the vote of the people, which is what everybody wanted, including the founders,” Trump said. “Everybody wanted it brought back. And many Presidents had tried to get it back. I was the one to do it.”

“The idea,” Biden shot back later, “that the founders wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about women’s health is ridiculous.”

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When asked about his stance on abortion pills, after the Supreme Court struck down a challenge to the pregnancy termination pill mifepristone this month, Trump said that he wouldn’t block the medications. But he repeatedly slammed Biden for vowing to restore Roe, erroneously saying that doing so would allow doctors under the Biden administration to “take the life of the baby in the ninth month, and even after birth.” (Abortions don’t happen “after birth,” which would be infanticide, a crime in all states.) Abortions later in pregnancy are rare—in 2021, less than 1% of abortions took place after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden condemned Trump’s role in the overturning of Roe, as Trump appointed three of the justices that ruled in favor of overturning it.

“It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done,” Biden said to Trump.

The President lambasted abortion restrictions, zeroing in on Republican-led states—like Georgia, where Thursday night’s debate took place—that ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women even know if they’re pregnant.

Trump argued that “everybody, without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives” wanted Roe to be repealed so that states could individually make their own laws on abortion. Biden called that claim “just ridiculous,” arguing that “the vast majority of constitutional scholars” supported Roe when it was first decided. Many polls have shown that Americans now largely support legal abortion.

Reproductive rights groups took to social media during the debate, railing against Trump for his comments on abortion. Planned Parenthood Action posted on X: “This disinformation about abortion is meant to confuse people and distract from what Trump and his allies really want to do—ban all abortions.”