Nikki Haley would sign abortion ban if elected president but says Senate unlikely to pass bill

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she would sign a federal abortion ban if she wins the White House, but she acknowledged that such a bill would be unlikely to pass the Senate.

"If there's 60 votes, which we're not anywhere near that, and if there's something of a come-together on consensus, yes, of course, I would sign it, because that's 60, you know, 60 votes out of 100 saying, 'This is what America wants,'" Haley said Wednesday in response to a question from a Saint Anselm College student who asked whether she would sign a national abortion ban if it passed the House and the Senate. 

The student, who was attending Haley's speech at the "Politics and Eggs" program at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, followed up by asking, "New Hampshire voters are overwhelmingly pro-choice, so how would you reconcile that in the New Hampshire primary?"

"I can't suddenly change my pro-life position because I'm campaigning in New Hampshire, but what I will tell you is I think it's incredibly personal and I'm going to treat it with the respect it deserves," Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said.

"Don't let them tell you that a Republican president can ban abortion because we have 45 pro-life senators. We might get one or two this cycle; we're nowhere near 60. And nobody wants to tell you that. ... Rather than debating something that's never going to go anywhere, why don't we debate what we can make a difference on and that is how do you save babies but support moms," she also said.

Haley said last month that her goal is to "save as many babies and help as many moms as possible" but in order to accomplish that, "the next president must find national consensus" on abortion.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.