Big Fail By Trump Administration on Abortion Drug

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 11, 2025

It’s been my opinion these last nine months that, on abortion, President Trump has governed better than he campaigned. He and then-Sen. Vance gave pro-lifers agita with all their Election Year talk about being done with the abortion issue, being just fine with the status quo. My very first column for this site was a cri du coeur against their gutting of the GOP’s pro-life platform.

But then came the actual second Trump Administration itself and a lot of those fears were put to rest. Trump and Vance were fantastic in and around the March for Life. There was every reason to think that some understandable pragmatism on the campaign trail would give way to the pro-life bravery we had come to expect from the one President who finally, historically, overturned Roe v. Wade.

What are we to make, then, of the disheartening fact that the FDA approved a cheaper version of the abortion pill mifepristone mere hours before the government shutdown? If you are both a Trumper and a pro-lifer—as I am—it is tempting to note the timing and to argue that it might be the Deep State at work. The shutdown will be won by whichever party can make the other party’s constituents feel more pain, right? “You’re going to ratchet up the effects in blue states and lay off government workers, Mr. President? Well, voila! We just stuck it to your pro-life voters (not to mention the unborn) by having our people in the FDA make it even easier to access abortion pills.” Something like that.

The problem with this theory is that Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt is defending the FDA’s action. Not on the merits of the pill itself but that the FDA’s hands were tied by the law. Ed Feser had the best response to this:

This is not a small matter. Abortion drugs are now the most common method for killing unborn children in the United States. Approving a cheaper version of the abortion pill makes it even easier to kill them. Approving it in this manner runs afoul not just of commitments HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made to Congress but even of the Trump-Vance campaign’s own “states-only” abortion policy on the campaign trail. The mail-order abortion pill industry is completely undermining the victory won by pro-lifers with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Blue states like my own Connecticut delight in shipping the pills so as to kill unborn children in red states where abortion has been outlawed or restricted.

The Trump Administration must find a way to reverse the decision its own FDA took to make it easier to access abortion pills to kill unborn children. Nine months in, we have seen the ability of the second Trump Administration to overcome obstructionists to make something happen, if the something in question is important enough to them. This should be on the short list.