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There is much to be distracted by in American politics: contentious primary races, a war of choice in Iran, a congressman accused of abusing
a sitting Republican senator’s daughter, and the general malaise that
is life under a second Trump administration. So the average American
voter might be forgiven for not maintaining a laser focus on the fragile
state of abortion rights in America.
One
group hasn’t lost focus on that issue, though: America’s anti-abortion
movement, which seeks to fully criminalize abortion nationwide (and
ideally worldwide). That movement has found a friend in acting Attorney
General Todd Blanche, whose controversial confirmation now seems likely to advance, and who is already promising abortion opponents that he will deliver for them by ensuring that abortion is banned everywhere.
In a phone call with religious anti-abortion groups reported by Politico, Blanche assured them that he and the White House were working in concert to ensure “that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.”
“We
don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory
will be soon, and and and it will be permanent,” Blanche said.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
to end the era of legal abortion in America, and to do what the
anti-abortion movement had always claimed to want: to turn the question
of abortion’s legality back to the states. That, of course, was a lie.
From the day Dobbs was decided—and frankly from long before
that—the anti-abortion movement was working to strip the right to choose
from every woman, no matter where she lives, and no matter what voters
want.
Now, they have another powerfully ally with Blanche on board.
It’s
a major development. Attempts to ban abortion nationwide are broadly
unpopular, which is part of why Trump sidestepped the issue on the
campaign trail and essentially said he wants to leave these decisions to
the states. Abortion simply doesn’t rank as highly on the list of the
president’s concerns as, say, immigration, or building a massive arch to
honor himself. That’s partly a good thing—it means that this
administration has not made totally bulldozing abortion rights a top
priority. But it has also meant that random abortion opponents within
the administration, or administration members who feel beholden to the
powerful anti-abortion movement, can exercise extraordinary power and
the president doesn’t really pay attention. In a political news
ecosystem where Trump is at the center of everything, his lack of
personal emphasis on abortion means the press isn’t giving the issue top
billing either.
As
acting attorney general, Blanche already has the power to further
restrict access to abortion in an era where it’s in decline. That power
will only be augmented when he sheds the “acting” label, and Blanche’s
latest promises to the anti-abortion movement suggest he’s ready to use
it.
As
it stands, abortion is banned across most of the South and Midwest.
Women in those states either have to travel out of state for the
procedure or procure abortion-inducing pills from doctors in states
where abortion is legal. The anti-abortion movement and their allies in
the Trump administration see that as a loophole. The Trump Food and Drug
Administration is reviewing the safety and by extension legality of
mifepristone, which in the U.S. is typically used with misoprostol to
induce abortions (this two-pill combo is typically referred to as “the
abortion pill,” although misoprostol can still be used alone).
Mifepristone has been on the market for decades and has an exemplary
safety record; this review is entirely motivated by anti-abortion
politics. Because misoprostol can be used on its own to induce abortion,
the mifepristone review is a threat to abortion rights (not to mention
the trustworthiness and reputation of the FDA), but is unlikely to bring
about the end of mail-order abortion pills. Which is why the
anti-abortion movement wants the Trump administration to revive the
Comstock Act, an 1870 law named after anti-obscenity, anti-masturbation,
and anti-feminist crusader Anthony Comstock, to ban everything from
contraception to dirty magazines.
A
law criminalizing the mailing of abortion pills would be a major blow
to abortion access and to women’s health and survival. These pills are
often used as life-saving medications to help women with incomplete
miscarriages and postpartum bleeding; making it illegal to mail them
could create all sorts of shortages and bottlenecks that could leave
women in dire circumstances.
The
anti-abortion movement, no doubt, will deny that banning the mailing of
abortion-inducing drugs would have effects on women who are miscarrying
or bleeding. But the anti-abortion movement also continues to insist
that abortion bans don’t hurt or kill women—despite a growing list of
pregnant women who have died
preventable deaths in “pro-life” states after not getting the care they
would have received in states where abortion is legal. There’s an even
longer list of women in “pro-life” states who nearly died, or lost their reproductive capacities, or wound up in the ICU, or went septic. The “pro-life” movement’s answer to claims that their bans are hurting women has been to refuse to investigate whether their bans are harming women.
This isn’t the only area where the anti-abortion movement is revealing that it has been lying for decades. Before Dobbs,
the abortion opponents swore up and down that they would never
criminalize women who had abortions—only doctors would go to jail. Now
that they’ve successfully outlawed abortion in vast swaths of the
country, that tune is changing.
Take
John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life and the man who is
widely credited with his state’s strict abortion bans. Before Dobbs,
he was clear that “women need to be treated differently than
abortionists,” as well as that “women cannot be the defendants” in
either criminal or civil abortion cases. By this summer, he was saying
something very different. “In the last four years, our attitude has
lightened a little bit because we are looking at the scope of the
problem,” Seago told Caroline Kitchener of the New York Times. “I want for it not to be taboo to ask, ‘What is the accountability for these women?’ ”
Students
for Life president Kristan Hawkins once wrote that “we state again
emphatically that we oppose prosecuting women for abortion.” She is also
reconsidering in light of her movement’s successes, seeing prosecuting
and jailing women for abortion as an option once the public is more
receptive. “My message is ‘Not now,’ but I’m not saying ‘Not ever,’ ”
she said. “You have to make abortion unthinkable before you get to that
point when you ask, ‘How are you going to prosecute?’ ”
Seago
and Hawkins are leaders in an already radical movement that is getting
even more so. In Todd Blanche, they seem to have found a man who agrees
that when it comes to forcing women to stay pregnant whether they like
it or not, it is he, not women themselves, who should decide.
