Ivanka Trump says she's pro-life and ‘unapologetically so’ after refusing to take a stance on abortion in 2016
After famously refusing to comment on abortion during her father's 2016 presidential campaign, Ivanka Trump has now declared that she is "pro-life, and unapologetically so.” President Donald Trump's elder daughter was asked about her views on abortion during an interview with RealClearPolitics published on Thursday, October 29. “I respect all sides of a very personal and sensitive discussion, but I am also a mother of three children. And parenthood affected me in a profound way in terms of how I think about these things,” she said. “I am pro-life, and unapologetically so.”
A White House aide later clarified to the outlet that Ivanka’s answer was "both a personal conviction and a reflection of how far Democrats have shifted left" on the issue. “A huge driving part of that” stance, the aide said, “is where the Democratic Party has gone.”
In 2016, Ivanka grabbed headlines after she refused to take a public stand on abortion. Former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards claimed in her 2018 book 'Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead' that Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner had offered what she described as a “bribe" so the organization would stop performing abortions. “If Planned Parenthood wanted to keep our federal funding we would have to stop providing abortions,” Richards wrote. She also wrote that Kushner told her to "move fast," albeit she ultimately declined his proposal, which she said, "felt almost like a bribe," The Sun reported.
In 2017, Ivanka defended her non-position saying she was looking at the bigger picture, and that taking a public stance on the issue wouldn't help her be effective in the White House. “I’ll take hits from some critics who say that I should take to the street. And then other people will, in the long term, respect where I get to,” she told Gayle King during an interview. “But I think most of the impact I have, over time, most people will not actually know about.”
A third of the more than 900,000 abortions performed in the country every year are done by Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, the organization receives over $500 million in federal funding for non-abortion-related services.
Speaking to RealClearPolitics, Ivanka also responded to criticism over her various positions as a White House senior adviser and daughter to the president. “One of the things that we've lost in this nation is an ability to respectfully disagree and debate,” Ivanka said of criticism generally. “Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are great examples of two people who represented totally different ends of the ideological spectrum and yet were the best of friends and were able to come together and have civilized disagreements and arguments.”
At this year's Republican National Convention — held at the White House Rose Garden — Ivanka struck an anti-elitist tone as her father accepted the nomination for the second time. “For the first time in a long time,” she said, "we have a president who has called out Washington's hypocrisy, and they hate him for it.” She told her father that “people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real.” She added, “I respect you for being effective.”