Trump's Justice Department Just Defended Telehealth Abortion

On Monday, Trump administration officials asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit from several red states seeking to restrict the sale of the abortion drug mifepristone. The Justice Department’s rationale closely mirrored arguments made earlier by the Biden administration, indicating that while Trump has sought to radically diverge from Biden-era priorities, abortion restrictions may not be one of them.

In 2022, anti-abortion groups sued to challenge a decision by the Food and Drug Administration allowing the drug to be prescribed via telehealth and sent by mail. The original suit argued that mifepristone—which is usually prescribed to induce an abortion in conjunction with the drug misoprostol—isn’t safe and that allowing the drug to be mailed violates a 19th century anti-obscenity law.

Ligation in the case has been ongoing ever since and has now spanned multiple presidential administrations. Biden administration officials pushed back against the suit primarily by arguing that the plaintiffs lacked standing. In a 2023 legal filing, Biden administration lawyers wrote that “plaintiffs ask this Court to upend that longstanding scientific determination based on speculative allegations of harm offered in support of claims and arguments that are untimely, unexhausted, and without merit.” In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, but Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho have since asked to revive the suit.

Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department have taken a similar posture to their predecessors. In a court filing on Monday, Justice Department lawyers argued—similarly to the 2024 Supreme Court decision—that the states had no standing to bring a challenge to the FDA’s policy.

“The States cannot keep alive a lawsuit in which the original plaintiffs were held to lack standing, those plaintiffs have now voluntarily dismissed their claims, and the States’ own claims have no connection to this District,” reads the filing. “The States are free to pursue their claims in a District where venue is proper…but the States’ claims before this Court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command.”

This most recent Justice Department filing shied away from making affirmative arguments for maintaining access to the abortion drug, instead focusing on apparent procedural problems with the states’ claims. The Trump administration’s willingness to stand by Biden-era attempts to increase abortion access indicates that Trump may be more moderate on abortion than many of his supporters have hoped. 

Trump’s position on abortion has been sporadic over the past few years. He praised the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, and in June 2023, he said that he would be “the most pro-life President” in American history. However, he also appeared to moderate during the 2024 election cycle. In a January 2024 town hall, he said, “We’re living in a time when there has to be a little bit of a concession one way or the other” on the issue. Later that year, the Republican Party removed support for a national abortion ban from its platform. 

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