Trump AG nominee says he’ll stop abortion drugs by mail; Sen. Hawley wants to see action

President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney general says the Justice Department will work to stop abortion pills from reaching pro-life states.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke during a July 30 White House Faith Office call with thousands of faith leaders.

Blanche, who passed a Senate committee vote Tuesday and will soon face a full Senate vote to confirm him as U.S. attorney general, said the Justice Department is working with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and Trump’s White House staff to stop abortion groups in other states from skirting pro-life laws. 

“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, according to Stateline. “They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing mail-order drugs.”

Intercessors for America posted a recording of the call on YouTube. The group later removed it. Politico first reported Blanche’s remarks. 

A Justice Department spokesman told reporters Blanche was talking about abortion pills sent through the mail. The spokesman said Blanche was not calling for wider federal control over state laws.

Mail-order allowed?

The FDA now lets certified pharmacies send mifepristone through the mail. The drug is used to abort pregnancies through 10 weeks.

The Biden administration stopped enforcing an in-person rule in 2021. The FDA then changed its rules in 2023 to allow pharmacies to mail the drug. 

Abortion providers in states such as New York and California can now prescribe pills online and send them to women in states that ban most abortions. Some states even have shield laws meant to protect abortion providers from criminal charges in pro-life states.

Heartlander News reported in July that abortion pills have helped keep abortion totals high since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. More than 40 states have some level of restriction against abortion, including 13 states with total bans, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

One tool available to Blanche is the Comstock Act. The federal law bars certain abortion drugs and tools from the mail. 

The Biden Justice Department issued an opinion in 2022 that narrowed the law. It said the law does not bar abortion pills from the mail unless the sender means for the recipient to use them in an illegal abortion. 

Blanche never mentioned the Comstock Act during the faith call. Yet he agreed during his July confirmation hearing to review the Biden-era view of the law. He also pledged to enforce federal pro-life laws.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader in the fight to ban abortion drugs by mail, said big pharmaceutical companies are “blowing right through [the restrictions], and they’re using the federal mail and other federal means of shipment to do it.”

“I think that’s illegal, and I want the Department of Justice to enforce the law,” he told Heartlander News Wednesday.

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Hawley serves as chairman, asked Blanche about the “mail-order abortion drug regime.” At the hearing, Blanche said the policies under former President Joe Biden that removed abortion pill regulations and allowed these shipments were wrong.

But Hawley told Heartlander News that action on the issue is far more important than statements or promises.

“I think of President Reagan: ‘trust but verify,’” he said. “I like Todd Blanche personally, and I think he’s a great guy. I hope he’ll be a great attorney general. But what we need now is action, and in particular, we need the Department of Justice to take action to stop the abortion drug from being illegally mailed into the state of Missouri.”

It is illegal to conduct conspiracy through federal mail, Hawley said, adding that these abortion pill providers are doing just that and “getting rich off of it.”

“They’re sending women to the hospital, and they’re killing babies. And we’ve got to put a stop to it,” Hawley said. “The attorney general told me that he would go after this, and I look forward to him following through on that. I’m certainly going to hold him to it.”

Blanche did not give the faith leaders a date for new rules, but said he would take action.

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon and it will be permanent,” he said.

Staff writer Michaela Estruth contributed to this report.