Donald Trump gave his clearest answer to date on the federal regulation of abortion pills
-- and it’s not what conservatives wanted to hear.

After months of avoiding specifics, Trump told CBS News on Monday that he would not use the 150-year-old #Comstock #Act to ban mail delivery of the drugs if elected in November, adding:
“The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue.”

Many prominent conservatives and anti-abortion activists were #outraged by the remark,
calling it “nonsensical” and “cowardly,” and warning that it could dampen turnout and enthusiasm on the right heading into a close election.

“It is not a pro-life position, it’s not an acceptable position, and it does not provide the contrast on this issue to the degree that we have had in the past between him and Kamala Harris,”
said #Tony #Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “What President Trump is doing is suppressing his own support.”

Though anti-abortion stalwarts credit Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe, this is far from their first clash over policy and messaging.

Trump’s refusal to endorse a national abortion ban and push to soften parts of the GOP platform ahead of the Republican convention sparked outrage from corners of the right, including from his former vice president, Mike Pence.

Though abortion opponents are pouring resources into a myriad of legislative, legal and other strategies to cut off access to abortion pills,
they have seized in particular on Comstock as a means of curtailing their use without having to go through Congress.

The law, passed in the 1870s and named for an official who campaigned against everything from masturbation to women’s suffrage,
bans mail delivery of any “lewd or lascivious material,” including any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used for an abortion.

Conservatives’ #Project2025 includes the idea of using this long-dormant anti-vice law to ban the mailing of the pills used in two-thirds of all abortions.

And in 2023, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD #Vance, joined dozens of members of Congress on a letter urging the Justice Department to use Comstock to prosecute “the reckless distribution of abortion drugs by mail.”

Perkins and other anti-abortion activists see Trump’s new rejection of Comstock as hypocritical given his repeated calls for leaving abortion laws up to states.

They argue that declining to enforce the 19th-century law is a de facto endorsement of doctors and advocacy groups that mail pills into states where they are banned.

Telehealth across state lines is a major reason why the number of abortions has increased nationally since the fall of Roe, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all abortions in the first quarter of 2024, according to a report from the Society of Family Planning.

“President Trump keeps saying that he wants to be out of the federal business of abortion,” said Kristi Hamrick, the chief policy strategist with Students for Life of America. “So, number one, stop funding it. And, two, end the federal prejudice in favor of this distribution.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/20/trump-comstock-enforcement-00175068