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If you haven’t been following news on the pro-life front during the first year of Trump’s second term, this headline will surprise you. If you’ve taken the word of leading pro-life organizations and Catholic or Christian media about the administration’s pro-life bona fides, it will shock you.
But it is true that the Trump-Vance administration is the most anti-life Republican administration in history. By a mile, by any metric. And it’s not particularly close.
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Any one of the administration’s anti-life transgressions would qualify it for this ignominious distinction.
Consider the current Department of Justice’s decision to defend Biden-era rules that allow the abortion drug mifepristone to be prescribed via “telehealth” and sent through the mail. President Donald Trump was expected to restrict access to the abortion pill, which accounts for approximately two-thirds of all abortions nationally. But in May, the DOJ asked a Texas federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by three Republican-led states looking to roll back the rule.
Then in October, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Food and Drug Administration had approved a new generic version of mifepristone. The administration, known for its willingness to buck norms and exert power, claimed its hands were tied because the FDA is required to approve generic applications that meet the necessary safety and effectiveness standards of the original drug.
The problem with this explanation was that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary had launched a formal review of mifepristone’s safety and efficacy earlier in the year — and the results hadn’t come in yet. How could they have known for sure that the generic met acceptable necessary safety and effectiveness standards? They could have delayed approval until their own review had been completed. But they chose not to.
Trump’s DOJ-enforced and FDA-approved mail-order abortion regime effectively nullifies the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That’s because, in practice, it all but guarantees the right to an abortion no matter what state you live in. Under the current rules, abortion providers in blue states freely ship their product into red states. This availability of mifepristone via “telehealth” providers largely accounts for the climbing total of abortions nationally since the fall of Roe.
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Neither Trump nor his Catholic Vice President JD Vance nor his Catholic press secretary Karoline Leavitt has ever offered a compelling reason for the administration’s defense of mifepristone. Certain pro-life leaders still like to boast that Trump is “the most pro-life president in history” for his role in overturning Roe. But his decision to favor states’ rights and protect access to mifepristone in his second term has had the net-effect of causing abortion to flourish.
Last week, Trump lurched even further to the left on abortion when he asked Republican lawmakers to be “flexible” about the Hyde Amendment, the long-standing legislative provision that bans the use of federal funds for abortions, during negotiations over reviving ObamaCare enhanced subsidies.
No Republican president has ever wavered on the Hyde Amendment in the 50 years of its existence. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush staunchly supported the rule. George W. Bush expanded Hyde by signing the Weldon Amendment, protecting healthcare entities that refuse to provide or pay for abortions. And in his first term, Trump himself pledged to make the Hyde Amendment permanent law.
Until very recently, even many prominent Democrats supported Hyde. Joe Biden supported Hyde up until 2020, when he finally relented to appease the Democratic primary electorate. The Democratic Party, of course, has been overrun by abortion maximalists who not only permit abortion but encourage women to “shout” their abortions. But the Trump-Vance administration appears to be heading down the same path. In August 2024, Trump himself pledged to be “great for women and their reproductive rights” — and he’s followed through in a big way since retaking power.
Opposing publicly funded abortions should be the barest minimum for any Republican politician hoping to secure the pro-life vote. Trump and Vance have systematically steamrolled the pro-life movement, lowering the standards to the lowest possible level. Any other interpretation of events is delusional.
To their credit, key pro-life leaders finally snapped into attention this week over Hyde and began challenging the administration directly. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, warned Trump about losing pro-life votes in the upcoming midterm elections.
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This is progress, however preposterously belated.
In reaction to news that House Speaker Mike Johnson intended to uphold Hyde, Dannenfelster posted “All hail @speakerjohnson!” on X. But is that really what we’re doing now? Hailing people for upholding the bare minimum? It is stunning how far the movement’s influence has fallen in the Trump era.
Movement leaders also recently called for the dismissal of Makary, but it barely broke through into the news cycle. That’s because it’s useless to exert pressure on someone so obscure to the public. Pressure campaigns only work when you go after the principal, not a bureaucratic sidekick. If you can’t criticize Trump or Vance by name, there’s no hope of changing their behavior.
The reason for the loss of influence is obvious: pro-life leaders and Catholic and Christian media handed over their leverage to Trump on a platter by “hailing” him so insistently. This had the effect of convincing the pro-life rank-and-file that Trump really was irreproachable on the issue — even as he discarded pro-life priorities, one after another, from removing key pro-life language from the RNC platform to expanding access to IVF to actively fighting to protect access to abortion drugs in court.
It’s possible that movement leaders no longer possess the juice among the pro-life faithful to rally them in opposition to Trump-Vance, so thoroughly have they extolled both as heroes on life.
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Put simply, you can’t crown a king, then expect to hold him accountable. Pro-life groups and media spent the first six months of the Trump-Vance administration posting his “wins” (such as they were) on their social media accounts and fawning over pictures of Vance kneeling and praying at the Vatican. It was an embarrassing display, and it has cost the movement dearly in the months since.
It’s no secret that the administration wants to sideline the pro-life movement as it heads into the midterm, just as it did in the run-up to 2024. And they’ll succeed unless the pro-life movement can mobilize quickly.
The annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., is coming up in late January. Will the speakers be bold and tell the inconvenient truth that this White House is pro-abortion to the bone? Or will they continue to cozy up and hope for table scraps and cozy appointments (an ambassadorship to the Vatican, perhaps?) while the number of unborn deaths continues to climb month after month, year after year?
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The cause of protecting the unborn is never politically convenient. It’s a movement for the courageous, not the wobbly. And certainly not for the sycophantic.
It’s time for pro-life leaders to step up and lead the faithful through the streets and demand that the administration change course. And if they can’t, pro-life voters need to find a new set of leaders.
