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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told faith leaders he is planning to roll back abortion access even in states that have laws protecting it.
On a private call last week hosted by the White House Faith Office, Blanche told the religious group Intercessors for America that moves to undo the Biden administration’s efforts to protect abortion are “taking longer than we want.”
But Blanche assured them that the Justice Department is “working hand-in-hand” with federal health agencies, the White House and President Trump’s team “to get permanent solutions so the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.”
The 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling allowed states to set their own policies, stopping short of a national ban.
In the years since, the number of abortions has continued to grow, frustrating abortion opponents.
Mail-order pharmacies, combined with blue state “shield laws” protecting clinicians from prosecution, have helped women maintain access to medication abortion even as conservative states have banned or severely limited access to abortion clinics.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Biden administration in 2023 permanently ended an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for a medication abortion.
The Trump administration has left those Biden-era regulations in place, keeping the issue out of the political spotlight but angering anti-abortion lawmakers and advocates.
Blanche hinted that restrictions on mail-order abortion drugs are coming.
The administration is “putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations” can’t send abortion pills through the mail to states where they are banned.
“If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that,” Blanche said. “They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs.”
Blanche didn’t specify if he was planning to invoke the Comstock Act, a long-dormant anti-obscenity law from 1873 that conservatives want to use to ban all mail-order abortion pills and medical instruments.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Blanche’s comments went far beyond what he said during his confirmation hearing.
Blanche committed to prioritize taking action on mifepristone if confirmed but declined to go into specifics.
When pressed by Republican senators, Blanche said the Trump administration opposes the Biden-era policy that allowed the abortion pill mifepristone to be sent through the mail, and suggested the Department of Justice could review it.
Blanche acknowledged that to the faith leaders on the call that “we don’t have complete victory yet” but promised it is coming.
“We will have victory, and victory will be soon, and … it will be permanent,” Blanche said.
The call was posted on YouTube by Intercessors for America and first reported by Politico.
Blanche’s nomination on Tuesday narrowly advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It had been held up for over a week by two Republicans seeking assurances that he would kill a proposed $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay Jan. 6 rioters.
Blanche is now expected to be confirmed by the full Senate, where Republicans have a 53 seat majority.
His remarks could make it more difficult for Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to vote in his favor, but GOP leaders can afford to lose two Republicans if Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remains absent and all 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus vote “no.”
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