The Supreme Court’s recent ruling to preserve access to telehealth abortions has escalated anti-abortion activists’ frustrations with the Trump administration and ramped up the groups’ pressure campaign directed at the White House.
With the high court unwilling for now to curb the availability of drugs used in more than two-thirds of abortions, abortion opponents are demanding the federal agencies President Donald Trump oversees take immediate action or risk depressing conservative turnout in the upcoming midterm elections.
“Our patience has run out,” Kristi Hamrick, who leads federal policy with Students for Life of America told POLITICO. “The pro-life movement, like many other parts of the [Republican] coalition, made an investment in Donald Trump. We want a return on that investment.”
The Trump administration had quietly spent the weeks leading up to the May 14 ruling ramping up outreach to anti-abortion leaders who are increasingly frustrated with its inaction on abortion pill access, Planned Parenthood funding and other movement priorities.
Both the White House and the Justice Department held closed-door meetings this month with anti-abortion activists who want the president to use executive power more aggressively to cut off access to the procedure.
Within hours of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary stepping down May12 — something abortion opponents had pushed for — his temporary replacement Kyle Diamantas was working the phones to reassure anti-abortion leaders that despite his past work for Planned Parenthood as a private attorney, he would be “the most pro-life head of FDA” in the agency’s history.
Advocates for abortion restrictions viewed the outreach as an attempt to turn the temperature down after months of clashes between social conservatives and the Trump administration over the White House’s promotion of in-vitro fertilization, regulatory inaction on abortion pills, and the continued funding of Planned Parenthood.
“It’s a reminder that, ‘Hey, look, you have this access to us,’” said Patrick Brown, a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, which advocates for restrictions on abortion. “The message is, ‘Remember, if this was a Harris administration, or a Biden administration, or a Newsom administration, you guys would be on the outside looking in.'”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called its huddle with White House officials “very constructive,” while declining to share further details.
Students for Life emerged from its own meeting with DOJ officials optimistic, and sent a video message to its followers that the agency is actively discussing whether and how to use the Comstock Act — a long dormant but never repealed law that prohibits the mailing of any drug or instrument used for abortion — to cut off access to abortion nationwide.
Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre disputed that characterization, saying in a statement that Students for Life “misunderstood what was communicated by our attorneys in this meeting” about discussions around the Comstock Act, though the agency “remains committed to advancing President Trump’s pro-life agenda.”
White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said in a statement to POLITICO that the FDA is committed to “a Gold Standard Science-based safety review” of mifepristone and said government agencies will keep meeting with anti-abortion groups “to advance the President’s pro-life agenda.”
Schuster also touted restrictions Trump ordered on funding for overseas family planning providers as an example of his willingness to take “bold action to safeguard life.”
Anti-abortion leaders stressed to POLITICO that these olive branches from the administration aren’t enough to win back their enthusiastic support in the midterms without swift action on two fronts: banning mail-order abortions and stripping all federal funding from Planned Parenthood.
The FDA’s promised review of mifepristone’s safety, they say, is inadequate at best and an intentional delay tactic at worst.
“I call it the unicorn review. It's mythical. I've never seen it,” quipped Hamrick.
Hamrick and other conservative activists say the ongoing legal battle between Louisiana and the FDA over regulation of mifepristone, which now moves back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, has put an even brighter spotlight on what they consider multiple failures of the Trump administration.
If the FDA had acted swiftly to cut off online and mail access to the pills after Trump returned to office last year, they argue, Louisiana and other red states wouldn’t have been forced to sue over the issue. Then, rather than support those lawsuits, the Trump administration fought against them, asking courts to throw them out or hold off on ruling indefinitely.
Even if courts ultimately side with Louisiana and force the FDA to ban mifepristone from being prescribed online and sent by mail, conservative activists say they won’t forget or forgive the administration’s inaction on the issue.
“It is such an example of them wanting to take the coward's way out, rather than put any political capital behind the issue,” said Brown. “They're hoping the court will take care of that for them, and they will just say, ‘We didn't have any choice.’”
But even as some anti-abortion groups rail publicly against Trump as “the problem,” others think it will benefit them more in the long run to play nice.
“The people who are up next, including [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and [Vice President JD] Vance, are close to Trump, so it doesn’t make sense to antagonize them,” said one leader who participated in a recent Washington gathering of activists to to hash out a post-Trump roadmap, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In the meantime, however, more clashes between the anti-abortion movement and the Trump administration may soon come to a head.
The law cutting Planned Parenthood off from hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding — passed last summer as part of Republicans’ megabill — is set to expire in July, and leaders on Capitol Hill failed to include a provision extending the policy in party-line legislation to fund immigration enforcement that they aim to pass in the next few weeks. That bill is widely seen as the GOP’s last chance before the clock runs out and the network of clinics regains access to Medicaid funding.
Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have vowed to include a longer-term defunding provision in a third budget bill that they plan to pass with only GOP votes. But many activists are skeptical that such legislation will happen at all — much less before the July deadline.
“You see some social conservatives, bless their hearts, talking about a third reconciliation bill which will be the one to go after Planned Parenthood,” said Brown. “But if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you.”
Asked about the funding fight during a recent Oval Office event focused on maternal health, Trump was noncommittal.
“We'll see how that goes,” he said. “To put it mildly, it's been a very thorny issue. It's all under negotiation right now.”
The machinations on the Hill over Planned Parenthood’s funding as well as the between activists and administration officials underscored a dynamic that continues to stymie the movement’s efforts across the federal government.
Though staunch abortion opponents hold positions at several key agencies and in Congress, they appear to have little decision-making power in an administration where power is concentrated in the Oval Office. And Trump, who became their champion by helping to overturn Roe v. Wade in his first term, has repeatedly disappointed them in his second.
“While there are definitely officials who are pro-life within the administration, at the FDA or the Department of Justice or wherever, I think it's a top-down issue,” said Gavin Oxley, the spokesperson for American United for Life. “Every appointed individual serves at the pleasure of the president, and therefore their ability to deliver pro-life wins is dependent upon the administration's agenda as a whole.”
Some activists worry that Trump’s lack of action signals that he feels he can take them for granted because they lack leverage to meaningfully impact how Americans vote in the midterms. They point to polling showing abortion ranks much lower on most voters’ priority list than economic concerns.
“Are there some die-hard pro-lifers who are going to be disappointed if the White House doesn't [restrict mifepristone]? Absolutely. I am one of them,” said Brown. “But ultimately, there's a lot of people out there who are still going to vote Republican because of immigration, crime, inflation, the war, or whatever it happens to be. And whether or not the administration did enough to get an A grade on abortion is not going to keep people home.”
Megan Messerly contributed reporting.
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