Donald Trump and J. D. Vance support a national ban on abortion. They are just calling it something else.

Since the justices Trump appointed to the Supreme Court provided the conservative majority necessary to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, women in Republican-controlled states have been forced to flee their homes in order to receive lifesaving care. Some women have died or were treated only at the brink of death. Contrary to the carefully cultivated stereotype, most of the women who seek abortions are already mothers, meaning that many of these women who died left behind children who will never see their mom again.

For these reasons and others—including the invasive, gender-based state surveillance and control required to outlaw abortion—these bans have become unpopular, even in most conservative states. Trump, who is more responsible than any other individual for their existence, has delicately sought to present a more moderate position on abortion rights to voters, while quietly reassuring the anti-abortion movement that, if elected again, he will continue to do their bidding. This is why, for example, Trump altered the GOP platform on abortion to remove the call for a federal abortion ban, yet inserted more convoluted language that insists that abortion rights are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The position that the Constitution already outlaws abortion is even more extreme than the position that Congress can and should outlaw it.

Trump and Vance do think Congress should outlaw it too. Vance said as much during the vice-presidential debate with the Democratic nominee, Tim Walz. He simply debuted a new euphemism for it, saying he merely supported a “minimum national standard” on abortion. That is just another phrase meaning “abortion ban.”

“I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard,” Vance told the CBS News moderator Norah O’Donnell.