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Trump Adviser and Possible Vice President Pick: ‘Women Have To Be Able to Choose’

During an interview Sunday, Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said when asked about his stance on abortion that women "are the ones that have to make the decision because they’re the ones that are going to decide to bring up that child or not.”

Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn is a registered Democrat who is being vetted as a vice presidential contender for Donald Trump, according to NBC News. THE KING/ YouTube

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, an adviser to Donald Trump who is also rumored to be a contender to join the presumptive Republican nominee’s ticket as vice president, said that women should “be able to choose” abortion during an interview on Sunday before backpedaling the next day.

“I think women have to be able to choose,” Flynn—a registered Democrat who is being vetted as a vice presidential contender, according to NBC News—said during an interview on ABC’s This Week when asked about his stance on abortion by Martha Raddatz. “They are the ones that have to make the decision because they’re the ones that are going to decide to bring up that child or not.”

In the same interview, Flynn also suggested that marriage equality was something “people [do] in their private lives.”

“These are not big issues that our country is dealing with that will cause our country to collapse,” Flynn went on, adding that he is “more concerned that our country could collapse because we are not dealing with education issues, immigration issues.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, swiftly condemned the retired general, claiming Flynn’s comments had “disqualified himself from consideration as Vice President” in a Sunday statement, according to USA Today. “His pro-abortion position is unacceptable and would undermine the pro-life policy commitments that Mr. Trump has made throughout the campaign.”

The next day, Flynn walked back his seeming support for abortion rights, telling Fox News that he is in fact a “pro-life Democrat.”

“This pro-choice issue is a legal issue that should be decided by the courts. I believe in law. If people want to change the law, they should vote so that we can appoint pro-life judges. I believe the law should be changed,” Flynn told the network on Monday, referring to Roe v. Wade.

Flynn’s comments on ABC had given the retired general sizable distance from the Republican Party’s stance on abortion. The party’s platform in 2012 was stringently anti-choice, calling for a “human life amendment to the Constitution,” or a so-called personhood amendment, which could criminalize abortion and ban many forms of contraception. Though Trump has previously claimed he would change the party’s platform to include exceptions on abortion bans, CNN’s Tal Kopan reported Monday that the 2016 platform draft shared with the outlet “does not include language about such exceptions” and “does not diverge strongly … from the 2012 position on abortion, saying that unborn children are protected by the Constitution and decrying abortion.”

Trump is expected to announce his pick for vice president ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.