Donald Trump has declined to endorse a national abortion ban and said regulating the procedure should be left up to the states, in a move that is likely to disappoint anti-abortion groups but reassure Republicans who are concerned that the party’s hardline policies could hurt their chances at the ballot box in November.

Trump, who is currently leading the incumbent US President Joe Biden in several nationwide and swing state polls, has come under pressure to lay out his position on abortion, an issue that has divided the US electorate and supercharged Democratic electoral successes in recent years.

In a video posted on Monday to Truth Social, his social media platform, Trump took credit for appointing conservative justices to the US Supreme Court who helped to overturn Roe vs Wade, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion. Trump said he was “proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted, and in fact, demanded, be ended”.