Todd Blanche pledges to use the DOJ to stop the mailing of abortion pill

This story first appeared on Bonnie Fuller’s Substack.

Anti abortion Republican senators scored a big win from embattled acting Attorney General Todd Blanche during his contentious confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Justice, July 15.

After a forceful demand by Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to restrict the mailing of the abortion pill, mifepristone, Blanche agreed to revisit the current Department of Justice interpretation of the 1973 Comstock Act, which allows the nationwide mailing of the abortion pill.

Under former president Joe Biden the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion stating that the 1873 Comstock Act which makes it illegal to send ‘‘abortion -causing articles’ through the mail, is not applicable to abortion medications today.

Senator Ted Cruz, asked Blanche if he is confirmed, to “commit to carefully reviewing that opinion to ensure that it faithfully reflects the actual statutory text that Congress enacted” in 1873.

Blanche replied, “yes, I will.”

If Blanche’s DOJ re-interprets the Comstock Act to be enforceable nationally today, it opens the door for the Trump administration to prevent women in states with abortion bans, from receiving abortion pills through the mail to end their pregnancies safely at home. 

John Coryn exacted the same promise from Blanche to review the 153 year-old Comstock Act after lying in the hearing by claiming that mifepristone is being sent to pregnant women throughout the country ‘without any medical guidance. whatsoever’ .

In reality, mifepristone can only be received through the mail by an online pharmacy, after being prescribed in a telemedicine appointment with a physician or other licensed medical provider.

Mifepristone is used in a two pill abortion regimen with the drug misoprostol.

“There are strict state laws about prescribing mifepristone through telemedicine,” counters attorney Julie F. Kay.

“Nothing is being done that is sloppy or hazardous”, explains Kay, who is the Founder and CEO of Reproductive Futures, a non profit, which advances telemedicine abortion access nationwide.

LIES ABOUT ABORTION PILLS WEAPONIZED BY GOP SENATORS & BLANCHE

Cornyn claimed to Blanche that mifepristone has hurt women ‘‘as a result of side effects, heavy bleeding, prolonged potentially infection or sepsis, incomplete abortion and other complications.”

The truth is that since mifepristone was approved in 2000 by the FDA for use in abortions it has had a rate of adverse reactions of less than 1%.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) calls it “safe and effective” based on “reputable, peer-reviewed and scientifically valid medical literature.”

In the same confirmation hearing Senator Katie Britt of Alabama who called herself a “champion of the unborn” claimed that “women are being put in harm’s way” because the FDA allowed mifepristone to be delivered by mail during the COVID epidemic and then since 2021 , beginning under the Biden administration.

Senator Josh Hawley, whose attorney wife, Erin Hawley, presented before the Supreme Court in a case seeking to rescind the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, also pleaded with Blanche to restrict mifepristone’s availability through the mail.

He presented charts allegedly showing an increase in abortions in his home state of Missouri since Roe V Wade was overturned in 2022. However, it was unclear where he sourced those numbers.

Abortions became illegal in Missouri after Roe was overturned and only became legal again, up to the point of viability, in 2025 after voters in his state passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to reproductive freedom.

However, abortions are still extremely difficult to get in Missouri due to a lack of clinics and Republican state legislators are placing a new constitutional amendment on Missouri’s November’s ballot, which would ban almost all abortions in the state again.

What was very clear from the number of Republican senators who put Blanche in the crosshairs over the access of American women to mifepristone by mail, is that they are furious that medication abortions are so popular.

By 2023 abortions using the FDA approved two drug regimen – accounted for 65% of all abortions, many prescribed through telemedicine appointments with doctors.

In states where Republicans control the legislatures and abortions are banned, the number of medication abortions is unsurprisingly high. In Wyoming, 95 % and in Montana, 84% of abortions are now medication abortions enabled through telehealth appointments and online pharmacies.

In fact, the number of abortions has actually increased nationally since Roe V Wade was overturned, increasing pressure on anti abortion Republican senators from voters in their base to shut down the flow of abortion pills into their states.

HYPOCRISY AS GOP SENATORS CLAIM TO WANT TO PROTECT WOMEN

Senators Hawley and Britt also used their time in Blanche’s hearings to claim that they want to protect women from being coerced by husbands and boyfriends to take mifepristone and abort their pregnancies against their will – situations, yet to be proven in court.

Meanwhile, neither they nor Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, have ever publicly voiced any concern about the 56 % increase in maternal mortality since Texas’s first abortion ban was implemented in 2021.

Nor the fact that the US has by far the highest rate of maternal mortality in high income countries with 22.3 women per 100,000 dying versus the next highest country, Chile at 14.3 per 100,000.

At least 12 pregnant women have been documented to have died during miscarriages and other pregnancy complications since bans became law in 22 states. 

Groups supporting the availability of mifepristone vow to continue to fight any attempt by Blanche to curtail its access through the mail.

“Attacks like Todd Blanche’s are yet another humiliating bid for support from anti abortion extremists, but abortion medication isn’t ever going away,” assures Lizzy Hinkley, Legal Director for the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine ( ACT).

“Providers across the country – in partnership with ACT – are working fastidiously to ensure telemedicine never falters.”

Liz Wagner, Senior Federal Policy Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, agrees. “Whether in a clinic or via telehealth, medication abortion is popular and the anti abortion movement can’t stand it.”

“ The only takeaway from this hearing is that anti abortion politicians will stop at nothing to try to ban abortion nationwide – even pressuring the Trump administration to misuse Victorian – era laws like the Comstock Act, to do it.”