Todd Blanche’s Abortion Pledge

Could Todd Blanche lose his bid to serve as Attorney General because of a pledge to enforce federal law? The prospect emerges as President Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department vows a crackdown on interstate shipments of abortion pills. This practice, which Justice Samuel Alito has suggested makes a mockery of the high court’s ruling reversing Roe v. Wade, is the subject of federal litigation. Yet Mr. Blanche’s vow is raising hackles in the Senate.Senator Susan Collins, locked in a tight campaign for re-election in which her backing of Justice Brett Kavanaugh has become a flash point, on Tuesday said that she opposes Mr. Blanche’s nomination. That complicates Mr. Blanche’s nomination bid in a narrowly split Senate. Ms. Collins cites Mr. Blanche’s “pledge to an anti-abortion organization that he would seek to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication to women nationwide,” the Hill reports. Mr. Blanche’s pledge on this head, per Politico, came last week during a “private call,” later aired, with religious leaders. Mr. Blanche said that efforts to curb abortion were “taking longer than we want,” Politico reported, but he added that Justice was “working hand in hand” with health authorities “so that the Dobbs decision,” overturning Roe, “becomes permanent in every single state.” The nominee said “we will have victory, and victory will be soon.”Mr. Blanche averred that the administration was “putting practices and policies in place,” Politico said, to halt the mailing of abortion medications to residents of states where the procedure is restricted. His remarks are best viewed in light of the workarounds pro-abortion activists devised after the Dobbs ruling in 2022. Since then, the number of abortions performed in the country has risen, not declined, the Guttmacher Institute reports.Lax federal regulations, first imposed by President Biden, are helping pave the way for the shipment of abortion pills to states like, say Louisiana, which in federal court is challenging the policy. The Supreme Court is keeping the federal regulations in place while the litigation plays out. This drew criticism from Justice Alito, who lamented that “more abortions now occur each month in Louisiana than they did before Dobbs.” This, Justice Alito added, “would not have been possible,” had Mr. Biden’s Food and Drug Administration not taken steps “to facilitate mail-order abortions.” Yet as these columns asserted in May, “it’s hard to fathom why President Trump,” the self-described “most pro-life president in history,” has so far preserved “the FDA’s lax regulation on mail access to abortion medication.” Mr. Blanche’s remarks could be an early signal of a policy shift.Such a move would vindicate the federalist underpinnings of our constitutional system, which enshrines state sovereignty. The Pelican state, asserting its rights, reckons in court pleadings that the regulation allowing drugs like Mifepristone to be prescribed via, say, telemedicine, has resulted in “numerous illegal abortions” in the state. The shipping of abortion pills via mail could also breach the letter of the law, in the form of the Comstock Act of 1873.The nominee to serve as America’s top law enforcement officer “appeared to suggest specific restrictions were coming on telehealth prescription and mail delivery of abortion pills,” Politico reported. That would suggest that the Trump administration is starting to take seriously its legal responsibility to preserve states’ rights, vouchsafed by Dobbs, to set their own policies on abortion. First, though, Mr. Blanche has to clear the hurdle of Senate confirmation.

Todd Blanche’s Abortion Pledge

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