In the early morning hours, before the sun came up on Saturday Aug. 8, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. But long before the vote, Blanche’s comments inside and outside of the confirmation process signaled an escalation of President Donald Trump’s anti-abortion agenda.
In a now-deleted audio recording with the White House Faith Office, Blanche outlined a plan to utilize multiple agencies, including his Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration, to end abortion access in all 50 states. Blanche illustrated how these departments—which should work independently of the White House in service to our collective health and safety—are blurring lines in service to an agenda targeting abortion providers and patients.
The National Abortion Federation, which sets clinical standards for abortion care and provides security and safety support for clinics nationwide, knows firsthand the grave dangers when checks and balances disappear within the federal government. Law enforcement is the only mechanism of accountability our current system provides for people who engage in violence and disruption at abortion clinics. While these activities are illegal under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act, the law is only as protective as the person in charge of enforcing it.
Not only did Trump pardon violators of the FACE Act, the DOJ has also paid them with tax dollars as a backwards form of restitution. Just last month, Paul Vaughn received a Trump pardon and $1 million from the DOJ after staging a blockade at a NAF member clinic in Tennessee. NAF is actively suing the DOJ to stop more payouts of this kind. But the Trump-Blanche duo has already sent a message with serious consequences.
Since Trump took office, NAF’s most recent Violence and Disruption report showed a 113% increase in threats of death and harm. Clinic blockades increased from one to six. While we know laws like the FACE Act are a limited means to protect people, not only is the federal government failing to meet these low bars, it’s abusing the law to incentivize violence. Blanche’s confirmation is part of a larger pattern of involving law enforcement in pregnancy, including abortion care. That should scare everyone no matter what you believe.
Blanche’s commitment to work “hand in hand with the FDA” to end abortion access adds to the alarm bells. As clinical experts, we rely on peer-reviewed studies, unbiased research, and patient experience to inform NAF’s clinical guidelines for abortion care. For decades, we’ve held the FDA to these same rigorous standards when evaluating medications. Politics and police have no place in this scientific approach. When we have the freedom to follow evidence, we can innovate and improve lives. Evidence and innovation affirmed the safety and efficacy of telehealth prescriptions for abortion pills. It expanded access under a hostile landscape. Our opponents responded by moving the goalpost and expanding their attacks.
Can the FDA and the DOJ—two departments typically unrelated in scope or matter— be united in a war to ban abortion?
NAF members know that abortion bans come in many forms. In some places, the threat of investigations and prosecutions is enough to stop access. In other places, requiring people to travel for an abortion blocks care altogether. In the process, anti-abortion politicians are finding ways to ban abortion without ever having to pass a formal, national abortion ban.
That’s why this year, on the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs decision, NAF released its policy position affirming abortion access throughout pregnancy, and committed to opposing viability and gestational limits in abortion laws. This is not only a commitment to expanding abortion access, but it’s a fight back against anti-science and policing trends in reproductive health care. Because we know in order to protect patients and providers from the whims of a Trump-Blanche DOJ, we have to eliminate legal lines that beg for enforcement.
Blanche’s confirmation is a stark reminder that expanding abortion requires proactive defense against attacks that disproportionately impact marginalized communities who already face over-policing and surveillance. Project 2025 laid bare plans to declare fetuses and embryos as people with legal rights. The NAF’s prediction: Blanche will seek to advance this concept of fetal personhood in our modern legal landscape, re-entrenching a legal tug of war between a pregnant person and their fetus. Our most important tool to fight back is to ensure abortion laws protect people at all points in pregnancy, in every state.
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