Trump reverses on prolife commitments ahead of midterm elections

By Bethany Blankley
The Center Square

One year into his second term in office, President Donald Trump has reversed stated policy positions he previously made to a conservative base that helped get him elected.

Multiple reversals have occurred over the past few months and more recently as budget negotiations are underway and midterm primary elections are heating up.

On Wednesday, it was made public that Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services released tens of millions of dollars in Title X funds to Planned Parenthood in December, Politico reported. Despite claims to stop taxpayer money from funding Planned Parenthood, it still is.

Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing to address dangers surrounding the abortion pill, mifepristone, including accessibility through mail order with no restrictions.

Committee Chairman U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, cited examples of dangers of the pill, including a Biden administration policy removing mail order safety measures that have yet to be reversed by the Trump administration.

Mail orders of the drug have led to crimes being committed against pregnant women, Cassidy and others said. In one case, a medical resident in Ohio is accused of purchasing mifepristone online and secretly giving it to his pregnant girlfriend after she refused to have an abortion. The Ohio Medical Board suspended his license, finding “clear and convincing evidence” that he posed an immediate danger to the public, WTOL 11 News reported. He was also criminally indicted.

In another case, a Department of Justice staffer was charged with capital murder, accused of purchasing mifepristone and giving it to his former girlfriend without her knowledge, resulting in her unborn baby’s death, The Center Square reported.

Seventeen Republican attorneys general have urged the Trump administration to implement restrictions, arguing that “allowing abortion drugs in the mail with little to no medical oversight should’ve been rescinded on day one of the [Trump] administration. Instead, nearly a year later, more unborn children die, more mothers end up in the ER, and more women and girls are poisoned or coerced into taking abortion drugs. Pro-life states are being completely undermined in their ability to enforce the laws that they passed.”

The Trump Federal Drug Administration has yet to implement restrictions or safeguards. Instead, last October, it approved another generic version of mifepristone.

On the eve of the federal government shutdown, the FDA approved a second generic version of mifepristone “quietly widening the options for aborting pregnancy before the government shut down at midnight that evening,” Pharmacy Times noted. Mifepristone was first approved in 2000. The October approval brought the total number of U.S. companies that produce mifepristone to three, “expanding supply at a time when access may be restricted in certain areas within the US. Mifepristone carries out about two-thirds of medical terminations of pregnancy.”

Not soon after, 51 U.S. senators called on the FDA to implement greater restrictions. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said at the time: “At a minimum, the FDA must immediately reverse the Biden-era policy of removing doctors by allowing mail-order abortion drugs without in-person medical oversight. Women are endangered by taking the drugs without a sonogram to check for ectopic pregnancy and confirm the gestational age of the child.”

This has yet to happen.

In the past week, Trump met with Republican lawmakers at an annual policy retreat telling them they should be flexible and support taxpayer-funded abortion.

“You have to be a little flexible on Hyde, you know that,” Trump told Republicans, referring to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion. “You gotta be a little flexible. You gotta work something … we’re all big fans of everything. But you have to have flexibility,” Fox News reported.

Two days later, 17 House Republicans voted to extend Affordable Care Act provisions that exclude Hyde Amendment protections, allowing for taxpayer-funded abortion.

Trump’s remarks “shocked and deeply disappointed pro-life elected officials, pro-life leaders and advocates, because Hyde is not some technical detail, it’s not a bargaining chip. Flexibility on Hyde means taxpayer-funded abortion,” David Bereit, executive director of the Life Leadership Conference, said.

“When the president mentioned this – that we needed to be flexible – that that was a flag that made the problem much, much worse,” Dannenfelser said at an event Monday night, The Center Square reported.

Now, prolife groups are prepared to commit $160 million to unseat Republicans who abandon their prolife base and don’t end taxpayer-funded abortion even if that means the House loses its Republican majority in November.