Frank Pavone
Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
A number of articles over recent days, including the Wall Street Journal’s “The Antiabortion Movement is Turning on Trump,” do not speak for the entire pro-life movement.
As a national leader in the pro-life movement since 1993, I organize quarterly meetings of other national leaders. At my address to the 60 leaders gathered at our February meeting I explained that the pro-life movement is in the best position it has ever been to achieve its goals, thanks precisely to President Trump. It was met with wide acceptance.
It’s become common to say, as the Wall Street Journal article does, that the number of abortions has increased. Yet the annual Status of Abortion report for 2026 by the National Right to Life Committee concludes that the answer to the question of whether there are more abortions now than under Roe is “We don’t know.”
The Alan Guttmacher Institute has started using projections from smaller data sets of clinics and that has replaced more comprehensive gathering of numbers.
Moreover, the sale of an abortion drug doesn’t mean it was taken. Some stockpile these drugs, or change their minds after they purchase them.
We do know, however, that laws restricting or prohibiting abortion save lives.
On the abortion pill, the Trump Administration is researching its health impacts, but not based on political ideology. That’s what Democrat administrations have done. Instead, it is pursuing scientific research that will not be easily dismissed. The down side? It takes more time.
If the current administration announced that it has abandoned its study, or found the abortion drugs to be just fine, I’d complain. But that’s not what’s happening.
As for leaving abortion to the states, under Roe, the court told the states they could not protect the unborn before viability. Under Dobbs, they may. We need to get to the point where they must. But to go from “reverse” to “drive,” you have to pass through “neutral,” and that’s where we are now.
The president still acknowledges a federal role in abortion policy, as expressed in his Feb. 15 Presidential Message on Susan B. Anthony Day and in his March for Life video in January, which refer to ending abortion funding – which the president did – and expanding adoption support.
Others complain the administration restored Title X funding to Planned Parenthood. But that was a strategic retreat to avoid an unfavorable court ruling in an ACLU-generated challenge that would have tied the hands of the administration going forward.
Instead, the administration prefers to be free of that lawsuit and proceed according to its own rules to be able to remove more funding in the future. That seems wise to me.
As for Trump’s comment about being “flexible” on the Hyde amendment – it was a comment that should not bear more weight than his executive order enforcing the very same Hyde Amendment. Had he reversed that executive order, I’d be complaining too. But he hasn’t, and he won’t.
The pro-life movement has not turned on Trump. The leaders at our meeting were not in revolt. National Right to Life has been making similar points to mine, as has Concerned Women for America and the March for Life and many others.
And with good reason. Because more significant than delays and strategic retreats and passing comments is the fact that the Trump administration has strengthened the tools our movement needs: Freedom of speech, of religion, of peaceful protest, and has weakened the financial and ideological basis of abortion supporters.
I don’t need the president to do my job as a pro-life activist. I need him to protect my ability to do so. He is doing that at historic levels, and I speak for many others in saying I’m not turning away from that.
Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign..
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