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The Trump administration says its hands were tied over the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to greenlight a generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone.
“It’s not an endorsement of this drug by any means. They are just simply following the law,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of the FDA on Friday.
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I don’t buy this “simply following the law” excuse. Neither do key anti-abortion legislators, including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MS) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who rightly denounced the approval as a “betrayal” of the anti-abortion community that got President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance elected.
And neither does Kelsey Pritchard, political director of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
“‘Powerless’ is not a word that someone uses to describe this administration when they face trouble,” Pritchard told me by phone. “They’re known for bucking the status quo. They’re known for doing what they need to do to reverse problems.”
Oddly, the FDA issued the approval before it completed its own safety review of the drug, which began in mid-September. An Ethics and Public Policy Center study, showing 11% of users faced “serious adverse events,” prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to review “the latest data.” However, the FDA prematurely issued the approval without the results.
The administration had tools to delay or pause the process despite Leavitt’s contrary claims. While Title 21 of the United States Code states that the HHS Secretary “shall issue an order approving the application,” that’s only if the data provided by the manufacturer meets the standards of safety and effectiveness. Leavitt overstated the law’s rigidity as the administration could have cited the ongoing review, not to mention the safety concerns raised by the EPPC, as a cause to delay.
After all, the FDA’s primary function is to protect public health by ensuring the safety of medical products. If the agency was concerned enough to start a review, why wasn’t it concerned enough to delay approval? The decision defies logic.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s difficult to imagine a starker “life or death” situation than mail-order abortion pills. These drugs take hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn lives each year, as the Guttmacher Institute found that in 2024, 63% of all abortions came from “medication,” totaling roughly 654,000 abortions, which grievously injure and even kill mothers in the process.
It’s hard to say how many mothers are damaged by these pills annually. That’s because the abortion drug dealers advise women, especially in red states, to lie about the reason for their ER visits, which are known to involve hemorrhages, sepsis, and even death.
The approval also undermines Trump’s and Vance’s preference for states’ rights on abortion. Thanks to mifepristone and its peddlers, abortion is a national issue whether the administration likes it or not. Abortion pill manufacturers ship pills from blue states to red states regardless of the differences in state laws.
By approving a cheap generic abortion pill, HHS and the FDA are essentially aiding Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul in their quest to subvert anti-abortion laws nationwide. Clinicians in California, New York, and other abortion-rights states are protected by shield laws, allowing them to mail pills interstate without fear of prosecution. Telehealth abortion provider Aid Access reports that 84% of its 118,000 prescriptions went to states with abortion bans. This state of affairs renders state abortion bans meaningless. Dobbs may as well have never happened.
Trump and Vance are surely aware of all this. But sadly, they have little incentive to intervene. Abortion is broadly popular, and opposing it is politically hazardous. And whether they act or not, they’ll continue to enjoy the unconditional support of sycophantic organizations in the anti-abortion movement and Christian media, who rarely, if ever, apply pressure, no matter how energetically their administration promotes the culture of death. Trump and Vance know that these organizations and their talking heads will continue to provide cover, convincing their followers that this is “the most pro-life administration in history,” in exchange for access to power.
Tragically, most anti-abortion groups, SBA and Live Action excluded, have devolved into pro-Trump pamphleteering outfits, posting his administration’s “wins” and ignoring his mounting pile of anti-life actions.
Do they hold back criticism for fear of not being invited to speak at various “America First” galas? Have Trump and Vance bought their silence with cushy appointments? Do they fear that Vance might no longer occasionally return their texts?
It’s impossible to know, but I have no qualms about asking these questions. Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake, and the Trump administration needs to be pressured to correct course. The time for niceties has passed.
It passed long ago, in fact.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump dodged direct calls to restrict mifepristone, emphasizing states’ rights, which universal access to mifepristone effectively nullifies. He proceeded to remove the call from the Republican Party platform for a constitutional amendment to grant personhood protections to the unborn, and he even waffled on voting for the six-week abortion ban in his home state of Florida.
Vance, meanwhile, has been crystal clear about his commitment to protect abortion rights. On Meet the Press last July, he told host Kristen Welker, “The Supreme Court made a decision that the American people should have access to that medication. President Donald Trump supports that opinion. I support that opinion.”
Welker then asked him to clarify, asking, “Do you support mifepristone being accessible?”
“Yes, Kristen, I do,” he responded.
After his reelection victory, Trump told Time Magazine that it was “very unlikely” he would restrict access to mifepristone.
True to his word, Trump soon ordered the Justice Department to preserve access to the abortion pill by defending federal regulations allowing abortion pills to be available online and by mail. The DOJ argued in a filing with a Texas federal court that the three GOP-controlled states suing the agency lacked standing, protecting Biden-era rules easing mifepristone access.
When will the broader anti-abortion community finally blink itself awake from its delusions about Trump and Vance? When will they finally take them at their word about preserving access to mail-order abortion?
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The Trump administration is far from the “most pro-life administration in history.” In fact, it’s the most anti-life Republican administration since Gerald Ford, if not the most anti-life administration in history.
Meanwhile, the culture of death thrives in America, on the coasts, and everywhere in between.