The anti-abortion movement after Dobbs: Why activists are disappointed in Trump

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.

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.

These lobbying groups thought that the decision from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade would mean fewer abortions in the United States. Was that kind of their bad for thinking that?

There certainly was an expectation that once Roe was reversed, there were going to be all sorts of other fights — that they were going to fight this out in all 50 states.

At the same time, though, these anti-abortion groups are of the opinion that the Dobbs decision leaves room for federal action. And what they’re frustrated by right now is that Trump, in their mind, has really held them at arm’s length. Not only does he not want a federal abortion ban, but his administration has moved forward with the approval of a generic version of mifepristone. They have kept on the books Biden-era regulations that allow a woman to order these drugs through a telehealth service and not actually have to go see a doctor in person.

They believe that Republicans are standing still at a moment when Democrats, and frankly, this is backed up by the reporting, say that they want to codify Roe. So for these “pro-lifers,” it’s existential.

These groups you’re talking about, can we get more specific? Who are we talking about here?

There’s a lot of different groups here. When it comes to the “pro-life” lobby, there’s Americans United for Life, the March for Life, the Family Research Council, but the most politically connected is the Susan B. Anthony List. If a member of Congress gets a call from the March for Life, they’re picking up the phone eager to talk. If they get a call from Susan B. Anthony List, they might be sweating.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony List, is very much a political operator. That entire group, they are knife fighters through and through and they put the Republican Party on notice earlier this month when they announced that they were going to be spending $160 million, not just in the coming midterms, but in the 2028 Republican presidential primary.

The “pro-lifers” at SBA, they have not hid their frustration. They were angry at FDA administrator Marty Makary because he approved a generic [mifepristone pill]. So last December, they called for Makary to be fired. They’ve been sort of rattling the saber. But in our interview with her, she told the Wall Street Journal, “The president is the problem.” That’s a direct quote.

She believes that Trump, who was as pro-life of an advocate as you could have in 2016 and again in 2020, has set aside the issue.

The president met with people from the Susan B. Anthony List, including their leader Marjorie [Dannenfelser], last week. Do we know how much Marjorie and the president see the midterms and the 2028 elections differently?

The pro-life lobby thinks that there is a way for Republicans to run on abortion and not run away from it. They are going to spend a lot of money in these coming midterms, but they’re also going to spend a ton of money in the coming presidential primary. And the expectation here is that any candidate that they’re going to support has to agree to federal action on the abortion issue.

Marjorie told the Wall Street Journal in our reporting that the president, who had been staunchly and openly pro-life…remember, in 2016, there’s that moment on the debate stage where he says that Hillary Clinton is okay with “partial birth abortion” and describes that in vivid terms.

That got all of the social conservatives to stop thinking twice about this billionaire playboy from New York and see him instead as a social conservative champion. Well, in the 2024 election, Trump says, “Hey, I delivered you three pro-life Supreme Court justices. My work here is done. I’m going to focus on other things.” And when Marjorie went to Trump and said, “Hey, we need federal action, I need you to get on board,” the answer that she got was, “No. This issue is killing us.”

There’s a belief inside of the current administration that if they didn’t have to deal with abortion, then maybe Republicans would be picking up dozens of additional seats. So the fact that this meeting was put on the schedule is incredibly significant because it shows that the White House knows, look, we have to service this part of our coalition. We have to get on board with them. Maybe it reflects that the administration believed that they let a core constituency outside of the fold.

It seems pretty clear if you look at his decades of history of weighing in on every last issue that abortion didn’t weigh heavily on the president’s mind until it became politically expedient to do so.

Do you really think if, say, JD Vance come 2027 or so starts advocating for a federal abortion ban, a 20-week abortion ban, whatever it might be, that it’s going to upset President Trump?

You know, [with] Donald Trump, I think that everything is transactional. And so where you have these pro-lifers who are motivated by a single principle, and then you have a politician who is motivated just by getting the best deal that he can, do they get it back on the same page? Or is this a break?

And look, the anti-abortion lobby has been one of the most loyal constituencies for Republicans for decades. This is the story of the Trump era. He shows up and he tears the curtain on what Republican orthodoxy is, remaking the party in his own image. There are some things he absolutely cares about. Trade, immigration, foreign policy. In all of the other areas though, now there’s no gatekeeper to say what is and isn’t conservative. And all have sort of freely entered in to have this argument.

Some folks, like the pro-lifers, are saying this has been a party platform issue for decades. It cannot change. It shouldn’t change. They are looking not just to change the direction of the current administration. They’re looking to the future of the party and saying, “What will Republicans believe in 2028?” And their argument is that any definition of conservatism has to include robust limitations on abortion.

Previously, a lot of Republicans were very successful in saying, “Hey, we want to overturn Roe v. Wade.” That was the consensus. And so this is going to be a fascinating, fascinating fight that is going to tell us a lot about the identity of the new American right.