Trump is going to restrict abortion even more if he becomes president. We’ve heard he is thinking about endorsing a 16 week abortion ban to keep his evangelicals happy. (He likes the 16 week as opposed to the 15 week ban because it’s an even number. I kid you not…)
Anyway the following isn’t really news since it’s been out there for a while. I’ve written about it as have others. But the NY Times publishing it can make it real for a lot of people:
Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.
“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.
“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
[…]
Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the F.D.A. and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era.
The organizations and advocates crafting these proposals are not simply outside groups expressing wish lists of what they hope Mr. Trump would do in a second administration. They are people who have spent much of their professional careers fighting abortion rights, including some who were in powerful positions during Mr. Trump’s administration.
In his first term, Mr. Trump largely outsourced abortion policy to socially conservative lawyers and aides. Since he left office, some of those people have remained in Mr. Trump’s orbit, defending him in court, suggesting policy plans well beyond issues like abortion and attending events at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
These zealots are woven so tightly into MAGA world that it is impossible to separate them from the political opportunists and the grifters at this point. They will get what they want.