Pro-life advocates from around the world converged on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23 for the 53rd annual March for Life.
While we are grateful for President Trump’s pro-life record, we are alarmed that since last year’s march, his FDA appointees have authorized a new abortion pill, limited successful treatments for children facing life-threatening conditions, and dragged their feet on implementing stronger women’s health protections against the abortion industry.
Last September, the FDA inexplicably approved a new generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, produced by Evita Solutions LLC, which has stated, “[W]e seek to normalize abortion.” Despite deep concerns about mifepristone’s initial approval in 2000 and its harms to pregnant women, the Trump FDA granted the new abortion pill an Abbreviated New Drug Application, which skips the clinical trials required for name-brand drugs.
Yet at the same time, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad — a self-described “Sanders/Warren liberal” — briefly stopped young Duchenne patients from receiving Elevidys, a genetic treatment for their degenerative Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive, degenerative disorder that decimates children’s muscles and brain before shortening their lives. On Prasad’s watch, the FDA has taken negative actions against treatments for such similar conditions as Barth syndrome, Hereditary Angioedema, and Sanfilippo syndrome. Prasad only reinstated Elevidys in November with limited distribution, although the FDA granted it traditional FDA approval after it demonstrated statistically significant benefits in clinical trials.
The new abortion drug approval violates the FDA’s promise to investigate mifepristone. “Indeed, it is unclear whether you are conducting an independent safety review at all,” Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote FDA Commissioner Marty Makary last month. Limiting genetic treatments for incurable neuromuscular conditions violates the spirit of President Trump’s pioneering Right to Try legislation.
Both actions ignore the testimony of the vulnerable and victimized.
“I was on the shower floor SCREAMING, throwing up, bleeding everywhere,” testified one woman after taking the abortion drug cocktail. “[T]he pain was unbearable and unimaginable … and I have had brain surgery!!!” (Emphases in original.) Waiting times for gene therapies can cause children to suffer permanent and irrevocable loss of strength, function, and lifespan. Dr. Cara O’Neill of the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation has recounted how her daughter, Eliza, “went from talking in full sentences, singing and coloring – to struggling to speak even single words and having increasingly uncontrollable screaming and crying spells, sometimes lasting all night.”
President Trump, who revels in calling himself “the most pro-life president in history,” should take action. First, he must clear house at the FDA. Personnel is policy, as he learned too well from such first-term staffers as John Bolton, Christopher Wray, and Rod Rosenstein. The Wall Street Journal described Vinay Prasad as “a Bernie Sanders acolyte in MAHA drag” who favors UK-style rationing and has declared, “I stand on the side that sees abortion as health care.” Prasad is free to hold these views or his FDA post, not both.
Second, it can give the parents of terminal children greater freedom to extend their children’s lives.
And the second Trump administration’s FDA can reinstate the health standards put in place by the first Trump administration. The Biden administration removed the requirement that abortionists check for life-threatening conditions like ectopic pregnancy in person before dispensing abortion pills. The Trump administration can reinstate this at once, yet it continues to allow abortionists to mail drugs illegally to pro-life states. “[T]he FDA is facilitating this criminal conduct,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told the Senate last week. In this area, President Trump still lets President Biden’s autopen overrule his administration. That’s creating a political problem for his successor with Christian and pro-life voters, who gave the president 91% of their vote in 2024. Continued nonfeasance and malfeasance threaten to shatter his historic MAGA coalition.
By raising these issues, pro-life advocates would be acting in the best tradition of the March for Life’s founder, Nellie Gray, who confronted President Ronald Reagan for signing a budget containing some abortion funding for the District of Columbia. President Trump can deliver for his voters by taking a firm grip of an FDA that has expanded abortion pill trafficking, handed the Biden-Harris administration a policy win, and eliminated hope for suffering children.
Restoring the promise of life to innocent children is precisely why we march.
This article was first published in the DC Journal.
Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest and conservative commentator. His views are his own.
