Trump Needs Direction Shift on Abortion Pill

By: The Editors of The National Catholic Register, originally published September 2, 2025, NCRegister.com

There’s only one way Donald Trump’s second administration can be remembered as a pro-life presidency in a manner comparable to his widely praised first term in office.

Then, he displayed impeccable pro-life credentials by fulfilling his crucial 2016 campaign promise to appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who could be relied upon to help overturn the court’s disastrous  Roe v. Wade  decision that legalized abortion nationally — as they did via their support for the court’s landmark  Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health  decision in 2022.

This time, he needs to backtrack from a different 2024 campaign commitment: his misguided pledges to uphold easy access to abortion pills. Instead, he must mandate swift and concrete action against the use of these life-destroying chemicals, which are now responsible for two-thirds of all U.S. abortions.

Under the Food and Drug Administration’s current so-called “telehealth” regulatory framework, a pregnant woman can obtain abortion pills up to 10 weeks’ gestation after only one online or phone meeting with an abortion provider, with the drugs shipped afterward through mail-order pharmacies.

The abortion lobby continually misrepresents this abortion “self-administration,” done with zero direct medical supervision, as a harmless experience. That’s a lie. What ensues is that the mother induces her own miscarriage, with all the known injuries that can result, including potentially life-threatening complications such as sepsis, hemorrhaging and infections.

Abortion pill access is never “telehealth.” For the pregnant mother, it’s “teleharm.” For her unborn baby, it’s “teledeath.”

Responding to pro-life efforts to highlight the documented dangers of the abortion pill, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised a full review of the drugs’ harms and hazards. If it’s a fair and honest review, there can only be one outcome: sweeping change to FDA policy.

At a minimum, the FDA’s original rules, instituted in 2000, should be reinstated. They prohibited prescribing of the abortion pill after only seven weeks’ gestation and mandated multiple in-person visits with a doctor before, during and after a pregnant woman took it.

Even better would be to emulate the Supreme Court’s example in terms of overturning  Roe  completely. Similarly, the FDA can acknowledge it made an egregious error during the final days of the pro-abortion-rights Clinton administration and rescind the abortion pills’ approval completely.

The second urgent action the administration should undertake is instructing the Department of Justice to move aggressively against the network of abortion providers that are shipping abortion pills into pro-life states.

When the Supreme Court fulfilled Trump’s goal of returning abortion law to state jurisdiction via the  Dobbs  decision, informed pro-lifers knew this wouldn’t halt all legal abortions. But it should have been a major step forward, given that 16 states subsequently banned almost all abortions or allowed them only until six weeks’ gestation.

Since those jurisdictions include Texas and Florida — the nation’s second- and third-most populous states — a momentous decline from the approximately 1 million abortions that occurred nationally each year pre- Dobbs  ought to have taken place.

Lamentably, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the national tally has climbed, courtesy of the “shield laws” passed by eight pro-abortion states allowing abortion purveyors to profit without penalty for flouting other states’ laws by shipping hundreds of thousands of abortion bills by mail into pro-life states.

Allowing this to continue, without direct DOJ intervention in support of states like Texas that are striving to thwart these mail-order abortions, will make a complete mockery out of  Dobbs.

President Trump’s pro-life commitment has always been anchored more in political convenience than in a deep-seated personal conviction regarding the evil of all abortion. But equally, he has proven himself to be a man of his word in terms of appointing Supreme Court justices who subsequently voted to return abortion law to the states.

So perhaps the most useful service that pro-life members of Trump’s inner circle can provide at this crucial moment would be to remind the president that if he doesn’t move to rein in abortion-pill distribution, he’s allowing pro-abortion Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to mock  Dobbs  — and his pro-life legacy.

From The Editors of the National Catholic Register/Editorial.

The post Trump Needs Direction Shift on Abortion Pill appeared first on Cincinnati Right to Life.