The GOP Ticket Goes Soft on Chemical Abortion
By: Alexandra DeSanctis, originally published on July 30, 2024, National Review
Pro-life leaders refuse to hold the line as Trump and Vance indicate support for the majority of abortions.
In June, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in a case concerning regulation of chemical-abortion drugs, sometimes referred to as the abortion pill. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine involved a challenge to the FDA’s approval process for the two drugs used in chemical abortions — mifepristone and misoprostol — on the grounds that the process had been rushed and politically motivated, risking the health of women who use these drugs.
The Court’s ruling was silent on questions of substance; the justices ruled unanimously that the health-care professionals challenging the FDA did not have standing in the case. In short, the ruling said nothing about the legality and safety of chemical-abortion drugs. And yet, in the course of the past month, both Donald Trump and J. D. Vance have claimed that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of legal chemical abortion — and indicated that they support this fictitious ruling.
In the June presidential debate, when asked whether he would “block abortion medication” as president, Trump had this to say: “First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill. And I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.”
And in early July, just before being selected as Trump’s running mate, Vance told an MSNBC host much the same thing: “The Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication [chemical abortion]. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.”
This penchant for willfully misunderstanding Court rulings is nothing new. Since 2022, Trump has been asserting that the Court in Dobbs sent the question of abortion policy back to state governments — and has said he takes the same position — though the ruling was abundantly clear that the matter should be decided by the people and their representatives, leaving ample room for federal action.
Evidently convinced that softening on abortion is a wise political move, Trump and Vance have chosen to grossly misrepresent the Court’s ruling in order to justify their newfound support for chemical abortion. It’s buck-passing of the most devious sort, a half-hearted shrug at a ruling that never happened to give themselves cover as they wink at the vast majority of abortions.
This calculated copout comes against the backdrop of the Trump-led push to water down the Republican platform’s language on abortion. The GOP document no longer supports a human-life amendment to the Constitution, says only that the party opposes “Late Term Abortion” (capitalization in original), and removes any reference to the fundamental right to life of the unborn child.
Democrats remain the more extreme of the two parties on abortion, to be sure. But this does not excuse the GOP ticket’s outright embrace of legal abortion, nor the choice of much of the pro-life movement to ignore it. As I wrote recently for NRO, many of the most notable movement institutions and leaders have gone into contortions to claim that the much-weakened GOP platform is somehow a win for pro-lifers. Pro-life groups’ statements after June’s debate didn’t say a word about Trump’s position on chemical abortion or his misreading of Dobbs and FDA, and statements after Trump’s selection of Vance were nothing but adulatory.
For the pro-life movement and its supposed political champions to go soft on chemical abortion is not a minor concession. Increasingly, chemical abortion is becoming the entire ballgame. These procedures, which take place in the first few months of pregnancy, now account for about two-thirds of all abortions in the country and pose significant risks to pregnant mothers.
Meanwhile, since the Dobbs decision two years ago, the national abortion rate has in fact increased even in the wake of state pro-life laws, because in states where abortion is mostly unavailable women can still obtain abortion drugs via mail. The federal Comstock Act forbids mailing these drugs, but the Biden administration has willfully misinterpreted the law to pretend that it can’t be enforced. A future administration could choose to enforce this federal law, and doing so ought to be a major goal of the pro-life movement. But it appears that no one in GOP leadership — least of all the presidential and vice-presidential nominees — intends to do so.
It’s one thing for pro-lifers to reluctantly embrace the Republican ticket as the only alternative to the abortion extremism of the Left. It is another thing entirely to do so while ignoring this egregious shift in favor of legal abortion and pretending that the party and its nominees are as pro-life as ever.
Alexandra DeSanctis is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing writer at National Review
We ask all Cincinnati Right to Life supporters to pray for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. A prayer page specifically for Ohio Senator Vance has been created here.