President Trump’s Pro-Life Record is Not Perfect, But be Thankful for What He’s Done

The Wall Street Journal desperately wants stories about the pro-life movement “turning on Trump,” but that framing misses the truth.

Case in point, a recent Wall Street Journal story highlights a small handful of pro-life leaders criticizing President Trump over abortion pills, and yes, the movement should press any administration when unborn children and their mothers remain at risk. That’s called advocacy. But how quickly these well-meaning advocates forget that we can only have this conversation because Trump made the central victory possible. Without his Supreme Court appointments, Roe still stands, states remain powerless, and the abortion lobby still controls the law of the land.

Donald Trump did more to dismantle Roe, restrain abortion funding, protect conscience rights, and restore pro-life foreign policy than any president in modern history. Demand faster action on mifepristone. Demand stronger enforcement. Demand courage. But do not erase the man whose presidency gave the pro-life movement its greatest legal opening in half a century.

Start with the obvious but too quickly forgotten truth. President Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Those three justices joined the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. Without those appointments, Dobbs does not happen. Without Dobbs, states do not regain authority to protect unborn children. Without Dobbs, every heartbeat law, every protective state law, every protective abortion law now saving lives remains buried under Roe’s judicial tyranny.

That alone places Trump in a category no other Republican president reached.

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But Trump’s pro-life record did not begin or end with judicial appointments. In his first administration, he reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy into “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance,” blocking U.S. global health funds from subsidizing foreign organizations that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning. In his second administration, he has already reinstated that policy again and expanded it further. The 2026 State Department rule states that the policy now reaches beyond global health assistance to all non-military foreign assistance, and it closes loopholes that allowed abortion advocacy to benefit from American taxpayer dollars.

That is not retreat. That is one of the most aggressive pro-life foreign-policy actions ever taken by an American president.

Trump also led the United States into the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which affirms that there is no international right to abortion; that abortion should not serve as a method of family planning; that nations retain sovereignty over abortion law; and that the child deserves special safeguards before as well as after birth. The United States spearheaded the declaration in 2020, rejoined it in 2025, and tied it directly to the expanded Mexico City Policy. In the hostile world of UN negotiations, that’s crucial. It tells pro-abortion governments and bureaucrats that they cannot rewrite human rights law to impose abortion on sovereign nations.

Domestically, Trump enforced the Hyde Amendment after the Biden administration tried to turn federal agencies into engines of abortion policy. National Right to Life praised Trump’s early second-term actions, including his order reversing Biden-era abortion directives, his work to stop Department of Defense abortion travel reimbursements, his move to stop VA hospitals from performing abortions, and his effort to stop HHS from paying for abortions for those who entered the country illegally. NRLC also credited him for restoring Title X funds to Oklahoma and Tennessee after Biden punished those states for refusing abortion referrals.

His first administration protected conscience rights, defended health care workers who refused to participate in abortion, fully enforced separate payment requirements for abortion coverage in Obamacare exchange plans, stopped federal funding of fetal tissue research, and issued an executive order reinforcing the duty to provide medical care or emergency transfer for infants in need, including premature or disabled newborns. He also became the first president in American history to attend the March for Life.

His second administration has continued that record. In January 2026, HHS ended the permitted use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions in agency-funded research. NIH likewise announced that its funds would no longer support research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions, applying the policy across intramural and extramural NIH research. The administration also moved to protect conscience rights, reviewed abortion-related state funding conflicts, and proposed changes to bring Biden-era policies for unaccompanied minors back into compliance with Hyde.

None of this excuses delay on mifepristone. The abortion pill regime threatens both unborn children and their mothers. Mail-order abortion invites coercion, hides ectopic pregnancies, strips away in-person medical oversight, and turns bathrooms into abortion facilities. Pro-life voters have every right to expect the FDA, HHS, and DOJ to move with urgency. They should demand a full review of mifepristone’s safety, restore safeguards, end abortion-by-mail, and defend pro-life states whose laws abortion traffickers now try to evade.

But frustration must not become amnesia. The abortion industry wants pro-life Americans divided, demoralized, and politically homeless. The media wants a narrative of collapse. Pro-life activists should refuse both. We can press the administration hard on abortion pills while recognizing that both of Trump’s administrations have delivered judicial, domestic, and international victories the movement spent decades seeking.

The task now is not to discard the strongest pro-life president we’ve ever had. Dobbs opened the door. Hyde enforcement, Geneva Consensus, the Mexico City Policy, conscience protections, fetal tissue restrictions, Title X corrections, and Born-Alive protections moved the country toward life. The task now is that the administration must confront chemical abortion with the same resolve.

The unborn child does not need factional theater. The mother abandoned by abortion-by-mail does not need political scorekeeping. They need action. Trump has acted for life before, again and again.

Pro-life Americans should ask him to do it again, without apology, without delay, and without forgetting the record that brought us this far.

LifeNews.com Note: Raimundo Rojas is the Outreach Director for the National Right to Life Committee. He is a former president of Florida Right to Life and has presented the pro-life message to millions in Spanish-language media outlets. He represents NRLC at the United Nations as an NGO. Rojas was born in Santiago de las Vegas, Havana, Cuba and he and his family escaped to the United States in 1968.