Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told faith leaders on a private call last week that he wants the Supreme Court ruling that ended Roe v. Wade to become “permanent in every single state.”
The call happened last Thursday, hosted by the White House Faith Office. It was closed to press and off the record, but the religious group Intercessors for America posted the full recording online, and Politico reported the contents first. On it, Blanche said the Justice Department is working hand in hand with federal health agencies and the White House toward that goal. He said victory is not complete yet, but it is coming soon and it will be permanent.
The ruling he is talking about is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided in June 2022. It overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, along with a 1992 case that had reaffirmed it. The court held there is no such right in the Constitution and sent the question back to individual states to decide for themselves. That is why the map looks the way it does now, with total bans in some states, protections written into law in others, and everything in between.
The whole argument for that ruling was that it returns the decision to voters, state by state. Which is what makes the phrase Todd Blanche used on the call a different proposition entirely. Making it permanent in every single state means using federal power to reach into the states that chose access. He said as much directly, telling the group that where states have moved to protect life from the moment of conception, the administration is putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations cannot attack that.
The specific target is abortion pills. Blanche indicated on the call that restrictions are coming on telehealth prescribing and on mail delivery, aimed at stopping shipments into states where the medication is banned. Medication abortion means mifepristone and misoprostol, two drugs prescribed by a provider and taken at home rather than in a clinic, often after a video appointment. The Biden administration began allowing them to be mailed to patients in 2021. Since then, mailed medication abortions have gone from 5 percent of all abortions in 2022 to more than a quarter last year, according to the Society of Family Planning, and medication abortion overall is now the majority of abortions nationwide.
The legal tool for that is a law from 1873. The Comstock Act was an anti vice statute that made it a federal crime to mail anything designed or intended for producing abortion, and it has gone essentially unenforced for close to a century. The Biden Justice Department issued a formal legal opinion holding that it does not apply to abortion medication. At his confirmation hearing in July, Senator Ted Cruz pressed Todd Blanche to commit to reviewing that opinion, and he agreed. In a separate exchange with Senator Katie Britt, he called the mailing of abortion pills wrong and said, “I very much commit our resources to stopping this.” Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation policy blueprint, cited the Comstock Act repeatedly by its statute numbers rather than its name.
Supporters of the approach do not see any of this as overreach. Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis wrote to Blanche saying the Justice Department has failed to stop what they described as an unlawful and unsafe mail order abortion drug practice, arguing that abortions have risen since the 2022 ruling largely because of expanded mail access, and telling him “DOJ can and must act.” Americans United for Life endorsed his nomination in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, describing him as a sincere advocate for human life based on his statements and actions in the acting role. From that position, enforcing a statute already on the books is not a new ban, it is the government finally applying a law that was never repealed.
Reproductive rights attorneys argue the opposite, that reviving a Victorian era obscenity law is a way to impose a national ban that could not be passed through Congress. Liz Wagner of the Center for Reproductive Rights has said the anti abortion movement is targeting medication abortion precisely because it works and is popular. Julie Kay, who runs a nonprofit focused on telemedicine abortion access, has pushed back on the claim that pills are being sent without medical oversight, pointing to strict state laws governing how mifepristone can be prescribed through telemedicine.
The politics moved fast around all of this. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche’s nomination on Tuesday by a 12 to 10 party line vote, sending it to the full Senate. Cornyn and Tillis, who had been holding out over a $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund, backed him after he issued a new order scrapping that fund and narrowing the tax immunity arrangement they had objected to. Senator Patty Murray posted that a vote to confirm him is a vote for the words he used on that call. Several Republican senators remain undecided, and Blanche is still serving in an acting capacity.
The reason the recording matters beyond the quote is the gap it exposes. What Todd Blanche described to a room he believed was closed is broader than what he described to the senators who will vote on him, and it cuts against the position the Trump administration has stated publicly about federal enforcement on abortion pills. That gap is now the thing the full Senate has to decide what to do with.
