Former President Donald Trump is continuing to duck on questions about abortion access that Americans will face if he is elected — the latest involving the US Supreme Court’s case that could limit access to medication abortion.
Trump vowed on April 27 to release more details on how a future Trump administration would regulate the abortion pill mifepristone, telling Time Magazine he has “pretty strong views” on the issue and would be making an announcement “probably over the next week.”
That announcement never came. And now his presidential campaign says they have no expectations for it come anytime soon, even as a decision in the case could come as early as Thursday, the court’s next opinion day.
The evasion underscores the tightrope Trump continues to walk when it comes to abortion — an issue that has become a controversial flashpoint ahead of the 2024 election. Since launching his third bid for the White House, Trump has struggled to reckon with the political fallout from the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a sea change in the country’s abortion policy brought on by his makeover of the Supreme Court during his first term.
“Looking at policy on that, it’s still an internal process, but I don’t expect anything prior to the court weighing in on it at this point,” one of Trump’s advisers said. “That type of announcement, I’d be surprised if that were to come in front of the court.”
A second Trump adviser echoed that sentiment: “We’re gonna wait and see how everything shakes out with the courts.” The adviser added that there are “a lot of other issues that are just as important. We’ve got to focus on the economy, got to focus on immigration. There’s a lot of things that are happening.”
Trump’s policy team has been informally drafting policy on the issue behind the scenes for weeks and have sought counsel from outside allies, such as his former aide Kellyanne Conway, according to sources familiar with the process.
However, two senior Trump advisers told CNN they currently have no immediate plans to release a proposal regarding mifepristone and instead intend to wait for the Supreme Court’s highly-anticipated decision regarding the US Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
The case deals with whether the FDA overstepped its authority by expanding access to mifepristone, such as by allowing the drug to be dispensed without in-person clinical visits.
Access to mifepristone has become more important in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many Red states have banned the procedure.
The appeal was filed by anti-abortion doctors who say their practices have been affected because they must treat women who had complications from the drug. The FDA and outside medical groups insist that it is safe.
Republicans, who for decades have made abortion restrictions a centerpiece of their policy agenda, have varying views on how abortion medication should be regulated. While some conservatives and anti-abortion groups have pushed for it to be banned, others have called for a more measured approach, such as requiring that it only be administered by a physician.
Part of what anti-abortion advocates are grappling with are the optics of a Trump administration taking regulatory action that would crack down on medication abortion vs. relying on courts to take similar action.
“The sticky wicket is if the Democrats can say you used the court to deny women access to a legal and FDA approved medication. It’s a problem. Frankly, I don’t know how you stop it. It is clear that the FDA exceeded their authority,” one anti-abortion leader, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told CNN. “You could rein in the FDA and say it requires a physician consultation or something similar. Abortifacients shouldn’t be treated like aspirin.”
A second senior Trump adviser told CNN that the team acknowledges the vast and differing opinions held by conservatives on how to approach the issue and has been “cognizant of not just the political angles, but a lot of the technical goals that we need to be aware of and think through before we can come to some sort of decision.”
And while the former president often touts that he was the most pro-life president the country ever had, he also continues to view the issue as political loser for Republicans ahead of November, sources close to Trump say.
For much of the 2024 Republican primary, Trump avoided the topic of abortion, and when he did weigh in, he sometimes angered anti-abortion leaders by criticizing the rush of new restrictions from members of his party in response to the landmark decision. In April, he announced that he believes abortion policy should be left to the states, further frustrating many of those leaders.
The Biden campaign has sought to capitalize on the issue, warning in campaign events and ads of what a second Trump administration could mean for abortion rights.
“The question is — if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next? Your body and your decisions belong to you, not the government, not Donald Trump. I will fight like hell to get your freedom back,” President Joe Biden said in one ad released after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing a Civil War-era ban to be enforced. (The Republican-controlled state legislature has since repealed the ban.)
Recent polling conducted by CNN shows roughly half of US adults, 49%, want to see federal politicians work to enshrine abortion access nationally, while 37% say abortion laws should be left to states, and 14% call for nationwide restrictions.
A number of Trump’s advisers and allies described the former president as constantly weighing the political ramifications of every major announcement on such a sensitive issue, while also wanting to preserve policy flexibility for a second term.
“Trump isn’t dumb. He recognizes that banning abortion drugs isn’t good politics right now,” a person close to Trump told CNN. “It’s a sticky situation to navigate, but he’s keeping his options open.”
However, the sources also acknowledged that Trump’s penchant for punting on the issue could further frustrate some of his key allies in the conservative movement who helped propel him to the White House in 2016, many of whom are still irked by his refusal to back a nationwide abortion ban — despite heavy pressure from anti-abortion groups and allies to do so.
Trump’s evasion at odds with conservatives pushing for more restrictions
The decision to hold off on outlining a clear plan for how to handle abortion medication comes as many of these groups are calling for Republicans to take a more aggressive approach in restricting abortion medications, and view the FDA vs. AHM case before the Supreme Court as a key opportunity to push for more regulation.
“Although the case is related to abortion, the question before the Court is whether the FDA broke the law and its own rules when it removed virtually every safety standard, ignoring women’s need for in-person doctor visits and ongoing care when taking dangerous abortion drugs,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group, has said of the case. “Doctors, who have been witnessing the harm to women and girls, are asking the Court to hold the FDA accountable for failing its duty to protect public health and safety.”
Mainstream medical groups have rebuked the claims that mifepristone is unsafe, and much of the Supreme Court oral arguments earlier this year focused on whether the anti-abortion doctors challenging the FDA’s rules had shown that they were actually being harmed by the drug’s current regulatory regime.
With the current uncertainty around the Supreme Court case, one question that has been widely discussed within the conservative movement is the possibility that the next GOP administration would enforce a 19th century federal law that would ban the mailing of drugs used for abortions.
The Comstock Act, as the law is known, banned not just the mailing of drugs that induce abortions, but also contraceptives, pornography and other “lewd” materials. It has been dormant for decades, undermined by court rulings in the early 1900s that limited its reach. But the criminal statute has gotten more attention in the post-Roe v. Wade landscape, particularly after it came up in the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in this term’s blockbuster abortion pill case.
Trump was asked specifically by Time Magazine whether his future Department of Justice would enforce the Comstock Act, noting that his allies have called for it.
“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days,” the former president said, adding that he has “a big statement on that. I feel very strongly about it. I actually think it’s a very important issue.”
There is debate among conservatives about not just whether a future Republican administration should enforce the Comstock Act, but what that enforcement would look like.
The Heritage Foundation, for instance, cites a wide-ranging interpretation of the law and its enforcement as a key priority for the next GOP administration in their policy plan, titled Project 2025. The document, however, is vague on the mechanics of enforcing.
Some anti-abortion advocates view the Comstock Act as a potential workaround for a Republican administration to restrict abortion access without needing to rely on Congress — and have called for it to be interpreted broadly as prohibiting the shipment of abortion drugs from manufacturers, which could have the effect of banning medication abortion nationwide.
But others in the anti-abortion movement have pushed back on the idea that it would be used so aggressively.
In recent months, however, some influential anti-abortion lawyers have declined to even say what they believe to be the scope of the criminal statute. CNN asked a series of leading anti-abortion groups and conservative lawyers to weigh in on their views of the law. All declined to answer on the record.
Drexel Law Professor David S. Cohen put it this way: “This is a make or break election for the future of abortion in this country, not because of the national ban, but because of the Comstock Act. And you know, I don’t think that’s the right interpretation of the Comstock Act, but it doesn’t matter what I think. All that matters is if you have a Department of Justice, who thinks that is the right interpretation, and five justices of the Supreme Court who agree.”
CNN’s Tierney Sneed, Andrew Seger, Phil Mattingly, John Fritze and Betsy Klein contributed to this story.
