Professional pro-life dissatisfaction with the state of the national Republican Party hit a possible turning point over the weekend, with one prominent movement leader going so far as to declare, “Trump is the problem.”
The fight over the interstate mail distribution of abortion pills intensified last week when the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana and temporarily blocked a Biden-era rule change, defended by the Trump administration, that allows mifepristone to be prescribed and dispensed without an in-person appointment. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently put a stay on that order while the justices consider the matter, allowing the pills to resume.
It was against this backdrop that the Wall Street Journal published a report on May 3 with the provocative headline, “The Antiabortion Movement Is Turning on Trump,” primarily concerning the Trump administration’s refusal so far to restore the in-person dispensing requirement or enforce a federal law banning distribution of abortifacients via the postal service.
“Trump is the problem. The president is the problem,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser told WSJ. “It’s shameful that the Trump administration’s inaction has forced pro-life states to take their battle to the federal courts,” she went on. “It’s very clear that the issue is perceived as the third rail, and you just have to stay away from it. You cannot utter the A-word.”