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Attorney General Todd Blanche told religious leaders on a private call that the Justice Department is working to roll back abortion access nationwide, including in states with laws protecting it.
Getting into it: The White House Faith Office hosted the call on July 30 with the group Intercessors for America, days before the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on his nomination. Organizers said it was “not intended for press purposes” and asked any reporters listening to drop off, but the group posted the recording to YouTube.
Blanche said the effort is “taking longer than we want” but that DOJ is “working hand-in-hand” with federal health agencies, the White House, and Trump’s team “to get permanent solutions so the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.” Dobbs is the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and handed abortion law back to the states, so access now depends on where you live.
“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent,” he said.
He got specific about mail-order pills. Doctors in states where abortion is legal have been prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol (the two drugs used in a medication abortion) to patients who live under bans and mailing them the pills, a large part of why the number of abortions has risen since Dobbs rather than fallen. “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.”
He did not say how, and the distinction matters. If the FDA reimposes restrictions on mifepristone, providers plan to keep prescribing misoprostol, which can end a pregnancy on its own. Invoking the Comstock Act would cut off both drugs nationwide. That dormant 1873 anti-obscenity law bars the mailing of anything “designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion.”
A 2022 Biden-era DOJ opinion held that doctors could not be prosecuted under Comstock because both drugs are legal everywhere for non-abortion uses. A DOJ spokesperson said Monday that opinion is under “a thorough review.”
The department pushed back on the reporting. “These comments have been mischaracterized and need to be understood in their full context, which was with respect to mail order abortion drugs, not a broader expansion of federal control over states,” the department said.
The remarks go well past what Blanche said publicly at his confirmation hearing, where he committed only to “carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act” and refused to discuss the administration’s litigation strategy in Louisiana’s suit against the FDA. They also conflict with Trump’s 2024 campaign promise not to use Comstock. Trump said then that “the federal government should have nothing to do with this issue.”
