JD Vance doesn’t want to acknowledge Trump’s hostility to the pro-life agenda

The reality is Trump does not actually want to halt the distribution of the abortion pill. If he did, he could do it with a simple signature.

(LifeSiteNews) — Vice President JD Vance has been the Trump administration’s primary spokesman to the pro-life movement, tasked with easing the tensions that have arisen as the president pivots away from the movement and seeks to transition the GOP into a pro-choice party. Vance addressed some of those concerns directly at the March for Life in January, where he attempted to frame the Trump economic agenda as “pro-life” and urged pro-lifers to accept difficult political realities. But the primary problem with the Trump administration is not what they are not doing—that is, pushing the pro-life agenda.

It is what Trump is doing—that is, removing the pro-life plank from the GOP platform for the first time since the 1980s, urging Republicans to be “flexible” on the bipartisan Hyde Amendment (which bans federal funding for abortion), and openly condemning pro-life laws such as “heartbeat” bills. To simply leave abortion to the states is one thing. Trump has been actively doing something else.

Vance has been doing the interview circuit recently to promote his new memoir on his conversion to Catholicism, and he has notably attempted to avoid these questions. When Ross Douthat mentioned the Trump administration’s stance towards the pro-life movement as one of three things that reveals a post-Christian presidency, Vance addressed the other two. But Vance’s most revealing comments came in an interview with Allie Beth Stuckey of The Blaze.

Stuckey, to her credit, pushed Vance on the issue while praising the administration for some of the policies (such as an expanded Mexico City Policy) that it has implemented. She asked him about the most important issue facing the pro-life movement: the FDA’s Biden-era repeal of the in-person requirement for obtaining the abortion pill. The primary challenge facing the pro-life movement is the fact that pro-life states cannot enforce their laws due to the Biden administration’s decision to use the pretext of the COVID pandemic to temporarily suspend the requirement that abortion pills be dispensed in person by a certified healthcare provider or clinic in 2021; the change was made permanent in 2023.

This has created a massive mail-order market that has sent abortion pills flowing into states with pro-life laws, triggering a series of ongoing lawsuits between pro-life states and abortion states. To change this policy would be simple for Trump, would restore the decades-long status quo, and would permit the abortion issue to be devolved to the states, as he claims he wants. Thus far, he has refused to do so.

In responding to the question, however, Vance cleverly pivoted—although few noticed that he did not actually answer Stuckey’s question: So the FDA has put this under review and we’re well under review. I think the Wall Street