Former President Donald Trump released a statement about abortion on Monday that called for states to make their own laws on the matter and stressed the need for the Republican Party to win elections, prompting debate among conservatives and Christians divided on the stance.

The presumptive Republican nominee for the upcoming election noted in a video statement that his three Supreme Court nominations led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the decision which had posited that the Constitution protects the right to abortion. He stressed that “the Democrats are the radical ones” on abortion yet said “the will of the people” should guide abortion policy.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint. The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land: in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said. “Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will be more conservative than others.”

Trump said he is “strongly in favor of exceptions” on abortion for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. He told voters that “you must follow your heart, or in many cases, your religion or your faith,” again emphasizing that “at the end of the day it’s all about the will of the people.”

The former commander-in-chief also commended the Alabama Legislature for legally protecting IVF after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos conceived during the fertility procedure, in which a sperm and egg are artificially joined outside of the womb and implanted into the uterus of a woman, are children who can be protected by wrongful death laws.

The statement from Trump provoked controversy among Republican voters and conservative political commentators on social media: some asserted that Republicans must indeed be careful to refrain from losing the fall elections and said a federal abortion ban is not attainable, while others contended that federal lawmakers also have a duty to stop the murder of preborn babies.

Jeff Durbin, a founder of Christian anti-abortion ministry End Abortion Now, remarked in an interview with The Sentinel that the statement from Trump demonstrates the “inconsistency and compromise” within the positions held by the conventional pro-life establishment.

“This is precisely the problem with Christless conservatism,” Durbin said. “It’s an ethical position that is suspended in midair. It's not rooted in the word of God. It's not rooted in the will of God. It's rooted in the ‘will of the people.’ It's wholly inconsistent and is filled with compromise.”

Durbin likewise noted that pro-life entities have contributed over the years to Trump softening his stances on abortion such that he chooses “pragmatism rather than principle.”

“President Trump has gone through a transformation in his thinking. Early on, when he adopted the pro-life position, he was even arguing consistently that, of course, there must be some punishment for a woman who executes her child in the womb,” Durbin said. “He had his hand slapped by the pro-life establishment for saying that because they don't believe in equal protection for human beings in the womb. They essentially have the same position as the pro-choicers: that women who willfully take the lives of their children in the womb should be protected by law to do so, and should be able to do it with impunity and immunity.”

Roughly fourteen states were widely reported to have fully banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, yet most states with pro-life majorities in their legislatures have laws explicitly exempting women from prosecution in the case of an abortion. The abortion rates have increased in many of those states as women rely on ordering abortion pills via mail.

Durbin said the assertion from Trump that abortion policy should be driven by “the will of the people” is a “dangerous ethical system” which will lead to more death. “We have seen in history what ‘the will of the people’ can do when it draws a circle around its own group to dehumanize and destroy another group,” he said. “We should not be looking toward what the ultimate ‘will of the people’ is. We should be looking toward the objective standard of God’s own character.”