Nikki Haley says a federal ban on abortion wouldn’t be “fair.”

Republican presidential nominee Nikki Haley on Sunday refused to approve a federal ban on abortion at a certain number of weeks of pregnancy.

“I think the media has tried to divide them by saying we have certain weeks to decide,” Ms. Haley said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “In states, yes. At the federal level, it is not realistic. It is not fair to the American people.”

She was responding to a question from her interviewer, Margaret Brennan, about why she wouldn’t join another likely candidate, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, in passing a 20-week national ban.

Ms. Haley has said — and reiterated this in the interview — that the Senate filibuster makes it impossible to pass a federal abortion ban as strict as the one many Republican-led states have passed since the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade. , and that any anti-abortion president will therefore have to find a “national consensus”. (A majority of the Republican Senate, if it so chooses, could remove the filibuster.) But her remarks on Sunday were notable for their explicit rejection of setting a pregnancy limit.

That refusal is especially notable because last month one of the country’s most prominent anti-abortion groups praised her, it said, indicating she would support a 15-week federal ban. The group, SBA Pro-Life America, has said it will not support a candidate who does not promise to go at least that far.

At no time had Mrs. Haley made such a public commitment; in a speech at SBA headquarters on April 25, she stuck to her “national consensus” line. But at that time the group told a reporter for The Hill that she was “assured to set the national consensus at 15 weeks”.

SBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Ms. Haley, who signed a 20-week ban as South Carolina governor, is far from the only Republican trying to avoid details about abortion.

Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign has said he wants to leave the issue to states. Mr. Scott and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson have called themselves “pro-life” while shielding themselves from details; Mr Scott has been asked, but has not replied, whether he would support a ban earlier than 20 weeks. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is likely to enter the presidential race soon, recently signed a six-week ban in his state, but has left behind nothing comparable at the federal level.

A potential candidate, Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, went in the opposite direction on Sunday. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside With Jen Psaki,” Mr. Sununu, who describes himself as pro-choice but who signed a ban on most abortions after 24 weeks in his state, said the federal government wasn’t involved at all. should be involved.

“Not only would I not sign a national abortion ban, but no one should be talking about signing a national abortion ban,” he said.

Most candidates balance between social conservatives — who form an influential part of the Republican base and have waited decades for the ability to ban abortion nationwide — and the political reality that the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs and the Gulf of state-level bans that followed have turned anti-abortion policies into serious liabilities among Americans at large.

That has been made clear by a series of election results, beginning with Kansas voters’ overwhelming rejection last August of a constitutional amendment against abortion and continuing with Wisconsin voters’ election last month of a liberal Supreme Court justice who pledged to support abortion rights. .