Every once in a while, I have a moment where I am kinda sorta on the same page as Jessica Valenti, who has the “Abortion, Every Day” Substack. She’s been writing about abortion for as long as I can remember — I have a memory of being on a PBS show with her in the late ’90s or early 2000s.
Anyway, it appears we were both yelling at our computers as headlines kept insisting this week that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has promised/threatened a national abortion ban. She makes the point that the White House can’t actually do that; it doesn’t make law.
(Check out our friend Bill if you need help there.)
Kids, this administration can’t even roll back a Biden Covid decision to let abortion pills go through the mail without an in-person doctor visit.
I am certain a federal abortion ban is not coming.
But here’s where Jessica and I differ.
She says rolling back abortion by mail would be a de facto national abortion ban. No, that merely would protect women from getting abortion pills without a doctor’s visit — better women’s health care — and let the states be states. (Texas isn’t New York, and New York doctors should not be sending abortion pills to Texas.)
I think Valenti has an excellent point, though: It’s going to be a big deal at this point if sending abortion pills through the mail becomes against the law nationally. That’s one of the reasons, I suspect, why the Trump White House has no intention of doing it. Roe is over. Trump expending political capital on abortion is, too. They’ll placate pro-lifers by sending the vice president to the March for Life or include a line in a speech now and again. They’ll hope to distract the Catholics among the pro-lifers (there are a few of us) by a presidential statement on the 45th anniversary of the martyrdom of Stanley Rother, the birthday of Mother Cabrini, and the like.
But don’t expect anything substantial to come from the supposed review of the safety of the abortion pill or a rollback on pills by mail. I just don’t see it from this administration.