Don’t believe Trump’s lies about his abortion ‘stance’
When Donald Trump was asked about the recent Florida Supreme Court decision upholding his adopted state’s abortion ban, he promised he would announce where he stands this week, a sign of how tricky the politics of reproductive rights have become for the man who did more than any other to roll them back. Sure enough, on Monday, he unveiled his latest position in a video statement that attempted to thread the needle between his anti-abortion base and the majority of Americans who want abortion to be legal.
Trump’s address was, naturally, full of lies, including the absurd claim that “all legal scholars, both sides,” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, and the obscene calumny that Democrats support “execution after birth.” But the most misleading part of his spiel was the way he implied that in a second Trump administration, abortion law will be left entirely up to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state,” said Trump.
Trump probably won’t be able to dodge the substance of abortion policy for the entirety his campaign; eventually, he’s going to have to say whether he’d sign a federal abortion ban if it crossed his desk and what he thinks of the sweeping abortion prohibitions in many Republican states. But let’s leave that aside for the moment, because when it comes to a second Trump administration, the most salient questions are about personnel, not legislation.
Before Monday, Trump had reportedly considered endorsing a 16-week national abortion ban, but the fact that he didn’t should be of little comfort to voters who want to protect what’s left of abortion rights in America. Should Trump return to power, he plans to surround himself with diehard MAGA activists, not the establishment types he blames for undermining him during his first term. And many of these activists have plans to restrict abortion nationally without passing any new laws at all.
Key to these plans is the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-vice law named for Anthony Comstock, who persecuted Margaret Sanger, arrested thousands, and boasted of driving 15 of his targets to suicide. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act banned the mailing of every “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article,” including “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” intended for “producing abortion.”
Until quite recently, the Comstock Act was thought to be moot, made irrelevant by a series of Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment, contraception and abortion. But it was never repealed, and now that Trump’s justices have scrapped Roe, his allies believe they can use Comstock
to go after abortion nationwide.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a coalition of major rightwing think tanks, has published a 920-page plan for a new Trump administration, “Mandate for Leadership.” In it, Gene Hamilton, America First Legal’s vice president and a former Trump Department of Justice official, lays out an agenda for the department to target abortion medication.
A resurrected Comstock Act wouldn’t just stop women from ordering abortion pills through the mail. It could also prevent doctors and pharmacies from dispensing them, since neither the Postal Service nor carriers like UPS and Fedex would be allowed to ship them. And it would give the Justice Department a rationale for cracking down on the networks that help provide pills to women in states with abortion bans.
Some interpretations of the Comstock Act might curtail surgical abortion, since supplies used to perform them travel through the mail. Abortion could remain legal in some states but become nearly impossible to obtain.
Speaking of Comstock, a movement attorney told The Atlantic: “It’s obviously a political loser, so just keep your mouth shut. Say you oppose a federal ban, and see if that works.”
That is clearly what Trump is trying to do. Whether it works is up to all of us.