Trump’s acting AG Todd Blanche vows to stop abortion pills by mail if confirmed

In contrast to positions held by President Donald Trump and VP JD Vance, Todd Blanche said during Senate confirmation hearings that he's committed to halting postal distribution of abortifacients.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – In congressional testimony this week, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche struck a far stronger tone against mail-order abortion pills than the Trump administration has taken so far, raising new questions about the status of the government’s current position on the issue. The Hill reported that Blanche, during confirmation hearings to hold his role permanently, told senators Wednesday, “You know, I’ve seen video myself of what appears to be pills coming even from overseas to young women, and doesn’t matter who applies for it, anybody can get it.

There’s no instructions; they just come dumped out of a little plastic bag, and, and it’s wrong. And I very much commit our resources to stopping this.” “We are not in any way defending what Biden and what his administration did,” he went on, referring to former President Joe Biden’s elimination of the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pill and decision to halt enforcement of a federal law forbidding the distribution of abortifacients through the postal system, going on to reiterate.”

Blanche’s comments are directly contrary to the positions of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump said he would not restore the restrictions Biden lifted, and Vance (before being chosen as Trump’s running mate) echoed him. However, rather than committing to immediate action to restore enforcement of federal law, Blanche pointed to the Trump administration’s ongoing safety review of the abortion pill safety data, which is slated to release its findings after the midterm elections.

He also cited that review when pressed on Louisiana’s lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which continues to defend the Biden rules on the grounds that the review should not be interrupted or preempted. “For the first time in a decade, HHS and the FDA are actually taking a real look at what’s happening with some of these abortion pills and whether they’re actually safe or not,” Blanche said. “We want to get to a good result, consistent with President Trump’s administrative directive and priorities, and we very much believe that the Biden rules were wrong.”

Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it once a fetal heartbeat can be detected (around six weeks), with additional states imposing a range of later restrictions. Mail-order abortion pills have become the abortion lobby’s most potent tool for circumventing these laws and preserving “choice” without Roe v. Wade. The latest data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found 1,125,930 clinical abortions in 2025, a slight increase from 2024 that Guttmacher attributed in large part to abortion pills.

Planned Parenthood’s 2024-2025 annual report boasts it alone committed 434,450 abortions, a record number for the organization and 8% more than the previous year. The abortion lobby’s zeal to make abortion pills as easy as possible to distribute and obtain disregards a wealth of evidence indicating they are far from harmless to women even when taken with medical supervision. Pro-lifers point to an April 2025 analysis by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) that concluded almost 11% of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation, as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.”

While pro-lifers would welcome any change to the current permissive rules, many have consistently argued that the above evidence should render a new review unnecessary to take action, as should the fact that distributing abortion-inducing drugs by mail is already illegal under federal law, irrespective of safety, and the Biden administration’s decision to cease enforcement of that provision was made in protest of Roe v. Wade’s overturn, not based on any change in the medical evidence.