WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Donald Trump has disappointed pro-lifers yet again.
In a widely-read interview with TIME magazine last week, the incoming 47th president confirmed that he does not plan on restricting chemical abortion pills.
When asked if he would instruct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “limit access to medication [chemical] abortion or abortion pills,” Trump initially replied that he would “take a look at all of that.”
But after being asked to clarify his comment, Trump, who seemed confused about the question at first, forcefully stated that “it’s always been my commitment” to not ban them.
“It would be highly unlikely … I can’t imagine” changing my mind, he said. Still, it is a “complex” issue, and people feel “really strongly both ways,” he added.
Abortion pill availability was a notable issue on the campaign trail this past year, especially for the Trump team.
In July 2024, Trump’s running made JD Vance, a professed Catholic, was criticized when he said that “the Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that [so-called] medication, Donald Trump has supported that opinion, I support that opinion.”
Vance was referring to the Court’s 2023 7-2 decision to partially uphold the pill’s availability in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
In August 2024, Vance clarified previous comments Trump had made suggesting he was open to the FDA banning the murderous drug by telling CBS that what “the president has said very clearly is that abortion policy should be made by the states … you of course want to make sure that any medicine is safe and it’s prescribed in the right way.”
A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers have repeatedly warned that with the Biden administration eliminating requirements that abortion pills be taken under any medical supervision or with medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
What’s more, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022, the FDA as well as liberal states have sought to undermine any and all pro-life efforts by expanding access to chemical abortion pills. Some of their efforts have focused on mailing the pills to women through the postal service and by permitting the distribution of them through other channels.
In 2023, approximately 1,037,000 abortions were reported in states that have not implemented near-total abortion bans, an 11 percent increase from the 930,160 abortions recorded in 2020. The Guttmacher Institute has also found that, in 2023, chemical abortions accounted for 63 percent of all facility-based abortions in states without near-total bans, a sharp rise from 53 percent in 2020.
A recent peer-reviewed study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute provides even more alarming statistics. It concluded that “the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits following a chemical abortion increased over 500% from 2002 through 2015, according to an analysis of Medicaid claims data.” Additionally, the study also found that “the rate of abortion-related ER visits is growing faster for chemical abortions than [for] surgical abortions.”
Distribution of mifepristone has been restricted previously due to safety reasons since its original introduction under the brand name Mifeprex in 2000 and has been under the FDA’s REMS protocol since 2011. The latest CDC analysis suggests that, since 2017, the chemical abortion drug has accounted for 40 percent of abortions annually.