After spending much of the 2024 campaign moving away from the anti-abortion movement, President Donald Trump and his administration spent their first week in office trying to win it back.
The start of Trump’s second term coincided with the annual National March for Life. His vice president, JD Vance, made his first official appearance as VP at the event and told marchgoers that Trump’s White House homecoming represented “the return of the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes.” Trump also took several executive actions to prove that his administration, as he said in a video addressing the march on Friday, would “stand proudly for families and for life.”
“It’s been quite a ride through the election, without question. This is the first presidential election since Dobbs. So what happens now is really important,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told NOTUS. “All those are good indications that we believe we’re headed to ‘Trump One’ policies, pro-life policies. And if that’s the case, then I think we’re in great shape.”
While Trump’s actions have boosted the morale of people like Dannenfelser, other leaders are remaining cautious. Trump’s progressive movement away from the issue during the campaign — eventually declaring abortion should be left to the states and changing the Republican Party’s decades-old goal to enact federal restrictions — led to anti-abortion activists publicly speaking out against him. Lila Rose, the president of the anti-abortion group Live Action, made headlines last year when she said anti-abortion supporters should not vote for the Republican nominee in November.
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Rose told NOTUS last Friday that “there’s a lot to do and a lot of this can be done with the stroke of a pen by the president, so we’re eagerly waiting for him to be that ‘most pro-life president’ that he says that he is for the movement.”
“President Trump has signaled that he doesn’t want to abolish abortion. So, he may have a change of heart,” Rose added. “I would say God spared his life, you know, from an assassination, multiple assassination attempts, and so I would urge him, ‘Hey, spare the life of the unborn.’”
Trump has also followed through with actions the anti-abortion movement had been advocating for: He reinstated the Mexico City policy, which blocks funding from foreign nongovernmental organizations that aid abortion overseas; he also pardoned nearly a dozen anti-abortion advocates who were convicted for blocking access to abortion clinics, and revoked Biden-era executive orders aimed at expanding and protecting abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Anti-abortion leaders also have strident allies in both chambers of Congress, who voted on anti-abortion legislation last week — one that some House Republicans say could be the first step before federal restrictions.
Speaker Mike Johnson, who has long supported the anti-abortion movement, celebrated Trump’s executive order at the March for Life that declared the U.S. recognizes “only two sexes” because, he argued, it has specific portions that “[define] life as beginning at conception rather than birth.” (It’s unclear whether Trump intended to do that when he signed the order. The White House did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.)
“That was kind of the very bare minimum. And so now it’s kind of like, ‘OK, what else? What else do you have?’” said Abby Johnson, another prominent activist for a group that lobbies abortion-clinic workers to leave the industry. “We’re so used to losing that we will celebrate mediocrity, and that’s really not the position that we need to be in.”
Johnson — who told NOTUS she did not vote for Trump in November — made her feelings known at this weekend’s National Pro-Life Summit, a widely attended conference that takes place in Washington the day after the March for Life.
“While we absolutely appreciate what President Trump has done so far, it is not enough,” Johnson said to roaring applause. “We are going to continue to demand more. We are going to continue to demand more of our pro-life administration.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said last week’s actions were “a terrific start.”
“At the March for Life yesterday, people were marching, there was a lot of conversation of like, ‘Well, what is he going to do more? What is going to be next?’” Hawkins added.
In addition to saying he would not ban abortion federally, he also said he didn’t want to restrict access to abortion pills, the most common method of abortion in the U.S. While that doesn’t leave a lot of room for anti-abortion leaders, several who spoke to NOTUS said that the next step for Trump is to stop federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood — something that Republicans have admitted is on the agenda in the next two years.
Hawkins said that doing so would “cement” Trump’s “legacy” as “the most pro-life president we’ve ever had in the history of America,” but she was quick to add that he’d be “the most pro-life president” so far.
“We’re giving it away too easy,” she joked. “I mean, who knows what’s in the future. I haven’t run for office yet.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.
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