Former President Donald Trump attempted to reach out to women voters with a Fox News town hall, vowing to end sanctuary cities, restore “law and order,” and preserve access to fertility treatments.
“We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order,” Trump said in a forum that aired Wednesday on how to stop violent crime, such as the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who was killed while jogging in Athens, Georgia.
The outreach comes three weeks before Election Day as polls show a “historic” gender gap of about 30 points, with Vice President Kamala Harris doing well with women, whereas Trump has strong support among men.
The crowd selected to participate in the town hall was supportive of the former president, often applauding and cheering. When Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked Trump what he could realistically get accomplished with Congress on immigration, he didn’t directly answer the question but slammed President Joe Biden and Harris for their border record.
“There’s no country that can sustain this,” he said. “We’re a laughing stock all over the world. They’re laughing at our president and our vice president.”
Abortion came up within the last 10 minutes of the town hall. Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 after Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, ending federal protections for abortion access and motivating women to turn out to the polls in the midterm elections.
One woman asked the former president, “Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”
Trump said abortion should be decided by the states and implied he supports states that choose to enact less restrictive abortion laws.
“The states are now voting for it,” Trump said. “And honestly, some of them are going much more liberal, like in Ohio, than I would have thought.”
Trump later added that some state laws are “too tough.”
The former president declared himself the “father of IVF,” or in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment that has come under threat in the wake of the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” Trump said ahead of a question from a voter about whether her friends will still be able to access the treatment in the wake of abortion restrictions.
Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled the embryos used in IVF should be considered children, jeopardizing access to the treatment. Even though the state’s legislature passed bills to provide legal protections for IVF in the wake of the ruling, Democrats argue that access to reproductive care is at risk across the country.
“We really are the party for IVF,” Trump told Faulkner. “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favor.”
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Harris’s campaign argues the Alabama ruling offers a preview of what Trump’s policies would be like if he were to be reelected.
“Donald Trump called himself ‘the father of IVF.’ What is he talking about?” the vice president posted on social media. “His abortion bans have already jeopardized access to it in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”