Trump Won’t Commit to Protecting Abortion Pills
Donald Trump gave a noncommittal answer when asked about his plans for abortion pills.
The president-elect, in an interview with Meet the Press that aired Sunday, was asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he would restrict access to abortion medications. At first he said he “probably” would not, before leaving himself room to change his mind.
“More than half of abortions in this country are medication abortions. Will you restrict the availability of abortion pills when you’re in office?” Welker asked Trump.
“I’ll probably stay with exactly what I’ve been saying for the last two years,” Trump said. “And the answer is no.”
But when Welker asked if Trump would “commit to that,” he wavered.
“Well, I commit. I mean… things change. I think they change. I hate to go on shows like Joe Biden, ‘I’m not going to give my son a pardon. I will not under any circumstances give him a pardon.’ I watched this and I always knew he was going to give him a pardon. And so, I don’t like putting myself in a position like that. So things do change. But I don’t think it’s going to change at all.”
Trump has often taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade as well as state abortion bans that have gone into place since the Dobbs ruling that reversed federal abortion protections.
“I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” he wrote on Truth Social in 2023. “Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to,” he added. “Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!”
Trump was responsible for shifting the Supreme Court significantly to the right by appointing three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — during his first term in the White House.
Trump also said in 2023, “I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade, and everybody said that was an impossible thing to do.”
If Trump were to try imposing restrictions on access to abortion medications, it would likely be through the Department of Justice or the Department of Health and Human Services.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump’s nominee for HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said via an email from his campaign to The Washington Post that he supports the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, an abortion medication.
The Biden administration relaxed rules regarding prescribing and dispensing abortion medications by increasing access to them via telehealth, the mail, and pharmacies. It’s possible Trump would seek to roll back those changes.
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