(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump was slated to give a virtual keynote address to the Life & Liberty Forum hosted by the Danbury Institute, an organization that says it promotes Judeo-Christian values and wants abortion to be “eradicated entirely” on Monday afternoon — instead, he gave a brief message that lasted less than two minutes where he did not utter the word “abortion.”
Trump’s remarks were focused on defending religious liberty and he suggested Democrats are “against religion.”
“These are difficult times for our nation and your work is so important. We can’t afford to have anyone sit on the sidelines. Now is the time for us to all pull together and to stand up for our values and for our freedoms.”
He continued, “You just can’t vote Democrat. They’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular … We have to defend religious liberty, free speech and innocent life and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
After suggesting that the nation is in decline, Trump said he understood where the group is coming from and where they are going. He advocated that he’d be by their sides for the next four years.
The Danbury Institute takes a strong stance against reproductive rights, claiming life begins at conception, and “abortion must be ended. We will not rest until it is eradicated entirely,” according to its website.
The Christian organization says on its website that it believes that the end of Roe v. Wade was just the beginning to their life mission.
“We are grateful to God and to the current slate of Supreme Court Justices for the successful overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, the battle is far from won. In many ways, it is only beginning,” the website says.
Abortion rights are a key issue for many voters as Election Day approaches — with both Trump and President Joe Biden working to highlight their platforms as they face off in what is expected to be a tight race.
Trump said in April that abortion should be decided by the states. He has not said if he personally favors a certain number of weeks into pregnancy at which state-level bans should take effect, though he has publicly criticized a six-week ban in Florida and, more recently, talked privately about the idea of a national 16-week ban with exceptions, sources told ABC News in February.
The Biden campaign blasted Trump’s participation in the Danbury Institute event suggesting that his priority is to fight for those who want to eradicate abortion.
“If you want to know who Trump will fight for in a second term, look at who he’s spending his time speaking to: anti-abortion extremists who call abortion ‘child sacrifice’ and want to ‘eradicate’ abortion ‘entirely,'” Biden’s campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Trump takes credit for the for the U.S. Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone, and for the first time put the Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position,” Trump wrote on his social media platform last month.
Biden has blamed Trump for the spread of abortion bans since the end of Roe v. Wade, encouraging women voters to back him in November.
“[Trump is] wrong, the Supreme Court was wrong. It should be a constitutional right in the federal Constitution, a federal right, and it shouldn’t matter where in America you live,” Biden said in a speech in April. “This isn’t about states’ rights, this is about women’s rights.”
Organizers of Monday’s event suggested it was hard to schedule Trump’s remarks due to his ongoing court trials, but they were grateful for the video message. The Danbury Institute did not respond to ABC News’ inquiry on the length of Trump’s appearance.
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