Donald Trump attempted to strike a new tone on the abortion issue this week, saying he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights” — much to the frustration of anti-abortion activists.

The former president invoked the phrase in a post on Truth Social on Friday, reflecting his campaign’s feverish effort to reset the narrative in the race against Vice President Kamala Harris and present a more moderate image on the abortion issue, which has plagued Republicans electorally since the 1970s. Roe vs. Wade was destroyed in 2022.

Democrats often use the term “reproductive rights” as a stand-in for abortion, but also to refer more broadly to a range of medical practices related to childbearing, such as birth control and in vitro fertilization. Support for reproductive rights, when invoked by Democrats, almost always means support for access to abortion. Republicans, by contrast, rarely talk about abortion that way, and anti-abortion advocates were quick to note Trump’s shift in tone.

Lila Rose, founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action, criticized Trump on her podcast Friday for trying to “ingratiate himself with pro-abortion groups” by using the phrase.

“Not only is it unprincipled, it’s not going to help the Trump campaign to try to sound like a Democrat right now,” Rose said.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, said on X that the Truth Social post “understandably upset many in the pro-life movement.” Philip Klein, editor of National Review, wrote that in the fight over abortion, “it increasingly looks as if Trump is siding with the other side.”

Trump’s campaign suggested that the Truth Social post aligned with his past positions on abortion and other reproductive issues.

“As President Trump has consistently stated, he supports the rights of individuals in their respective states to determine their own abortion laws. President Trump also strongly supports ensuring that women have access to the care they need to build healthy families, including broad access to IVF, birth control and contraception, and he always will,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary.

Truth Social’s report came after a week in which Democrats repeatedly took Trump to task over the abortion issue at the Democratic National Convention, with stories of women struggling to get adequate health care in the post-Deer era. Harris attempted to directly link the state’s restrictive abortion laws to the former president in her speech on Thursday, saying that sexual abuse victims were denied abortions “because of Donald Trump.”

But Trump also repeatedly frustrated anti-abortion advocates during his campaign by refusing to go further in restricting abortion access. In an interview earlier this week, Trump said he would not use the Comstock Act to ban the mail delivery of abortion drugs, something anti-abortion advocates have pushed for. And earlier this year, he opted not to call for a nationwide abortion ban or restriction, as some Republicans have advocated, saying instead that the issue of legal abortion should remain a matter for state decision.

Anti-abortion activist groups have supported Trump despite these disagreements, and the former president continues to describe appointing Supreme Court justices who would later overturn Trump’s decision. Roe vs. Wade as one of the most important achievements of his first reign.

But Trump, who attended the March for Life as president, also appears to be aware that the politics of abortion have changed since then. Deer was rolled back, particularly as the abortion rights party has won referendums in red states over the past two years. He blamed anti-abortion advocates for the GOP’s losses in the 2022 midterm elections, and his campaign pushed to have language calling for a national abortion ban removed from the official Republican Party platform and replaced with language reflecting his own stated position that the issue should be left up to the states.

Trump has so far declined to say how he would vote in an upcoming referendum in his home state of Florida that would restore the right to abortion until viability, replacing the state’s current six-week ban.