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Why the anti-abortion movement is disappointed in Trump

Trump helped overturn Roe. Anti-abortion advocates still aren’t happy.

If you talk to folks in the anti-abortion movement, they’re pretty disappointed about the state of things in the US.

Despite the headline victories they’ve achieved in recent years — like, say, the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973) — they thought they’d be accomplishing a lot more.

Granted, they have a few things going for them: Republican allies in Congress. A Supreme Court has been sympathetic to their cause. And the man that they helped return to the White House, Donald Trump, who has embraced the title of most “pro-life” president ever.

And yet, leaders in the anti-abortion movement are ringing alarm bells and describing this as an existential moment for their movement.

“If the Republican Party fully follows this administration’s states-only strategy and abandons its commitments to pro-life action at the national level, then the movement as we know it is finished,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told members at SBA’s April gala. “There are more abortions in the United States now than there were on the day that Roe Wade was overturned.”

One of the movement’s major frustrations is that the Trump administration has embraced a patchwork framework for regulation of mail-order abortion pills, largely deferring to the states rather than calling for a national abortion ban.

The Supreme Court abortion pills case, explained

Philip Wegmann, a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the recent piece “The anti-abortion movement is turning on Trump.” He joined Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram to discuss why the anti-abortion movement felt triumphant just a few years ago, but now are very much on the back foot.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

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