Nikki Haley Says She’d Sign a Federal Abortion Ban if the Senate Sent Her One

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley publicly signaled that she would sign a national abortion ban into law if she wins the presidency and had the legislative margins to pull it off. 

Haley, the last competitor against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, made the relatively unambiguous declaration during a recent interview with Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s Face the Nation. 

“She said that you would sign a national abortion ban,” Brennan said. “Would you?”

“Yes, I’m unapologetically pro-life but I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” Haley replied. “I have said I am fine with a federal law but the thing is: in order to get a federal law, you have to have a majority of the House, 60 Senators, and a signature from the president. Margaret, we haven’t had 60 Republican Senators in over a hundred years—so no Republican president can ban abortions anymore than a Democrat president can ban—any state law.”

Taking her words at face value, this means a hypothetical President Haley would indeed sign a federal abortion ban into law if she had the legislative support to get it to her desk in the first place.

But to be clear, if Republicans keep the House and take back the Senate, they could indeed pass a federal abortion ban with a simple majority if sufficiently motivated. Under typical cloture rules, most bills require 60 votes in the Senate to be filibuster-proof, but a simple majority has the ability to make exceptions for bills and pass them on a party-line basis.

This means that the only things separating every female in this country from a wildly unpopular ban on their reproductive health is the outcome of the 2024 election and Republicans’ commitment to Senate norms.

In other words, just the election, then.

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