The Mifepristone Mess

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are a few things more megala maniacal than being
a talk radio host, And the only thing more megala
maniacal is being a talk radio host talking about an
article you wrote for a publication.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And that is what we are doing.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
So I had a piece in National Review, and this
was one of my bigger things I've written, and it
has to do with the abortion pill, as it often
does I think the abortion pill has I've written many
times before. For those who don't know, the abortion pill
is mifapristone. This is the drug that is used within

(00:37):
the first ten weeks of a pregnancy to basically cut
the baby off from food and oxygen, which results in
the baby dying. The woman then takes a second drug
called missaprostal, which induces labor and expels the baby from
the woman's body. This is now the most common way
that abortions happen in America. Sixty three percent of abortions

(00:58):
happen this way. Abortion is largely no longer a surgical
procedure in America. It's also a more dangerous way of
performing an abortion than surgical abortion is, and there's more
and more health and safety data coming out to indicate
that it's even more dangerous than we thought before. The

(01:18):
FDA labeling for MiFi pristone the abortion pill says that
it has like zero point five percent of serious adverse incidents. Really,
there's new health information. There was this review done of
available insurance data looking at about eight hundred thousand plus
women who had had pill abortions, finding that eleven percent

(01:41):
of them, not zero point five percent of them, but
eleven percent of them had had some kind of serious complication.
So there's all this new health and safety data. And
here's the thing with regulating MIPHA pristone. How we regulate
the abortion pill. Unlike a lot of things that have

(02:01):
to do with the abortion issue, like, for example, we're
going to defund Planned Parenthood the One Big Beautiful Bill.
It included a provision saying that that Planned Parenthood and
other big abortion providers like them is not eligible for
participating in the federal Medicaid program for a year.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
That provision.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
How many babies' lives is that actually going to save?
I'm not exactly sure. I think it's going to hurt
Planned Parenthood certainly. I think it'll reduce their capacity to
take lives through abortion, but it might just be a
thing that forces them into a different mode of existence.
And the abortion pill is actually the thing that will
facilitate that. The abortion pill can be distributed well, it

(02:50):
can be prescribed via telemedicine and then distributed via the mail.
So what if Planned Parenthood just gets rid of all
their brick and mortar clinics and just turns to this
entity that basically just provides people with mail order abortions.
Is that really going to reduce the abortion rate? Now,
I don't want a dime of my money go into
Planned Parenthood.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I think that's a good.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Thing, but I am clear eyed about whether that's actually
going to reduce the number of abortions. How we regulate
the abortion pill is something that has a profound impact
on the number of American abortions. When miphipristone was more restricted,

(03:35):
we had fewer abortions. And then comes along twenty twenty one.
In twenty twenty one, President Biden issued new regulations his FDA.
Within months of him taking office, his FDA issues new
regulations for the abortion pill, allowing it to be prescribed

(03:55):
only via a telemedicine appointment, so you don't have to
go to a doctor. The doctor doesn't have to do
an ultrasound to see how far along your baby is,
a telemedicine appointment, and then have the abortion pill be
shipped to you through the mail. So we're gonna Amazon

(04:16):
prime your abortion. This has led to the total number
of abortions in America jumping from about nine hundred thousand
a year at the start of the Biden administration to
a million per year at the end of the Biden administration.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
That's a huge jump, a.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Ten percent jump in the total number of American abortions,
one hundred thousand additional babies dying per year.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
So this is an issue unlike a lot of.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Stuff in involving pro life political efforts, like some of
you may remember in the two thousands the huge years
long fight over banning what was called partial birth abortion,
where Bill Clinton vetoed this law to end this barbaric
form of late term abortion, and then finally George W.

(05:06):
Bush signed it into law, and this it was held
up by the Supreme Court. Finally, the Supreme Court, thanks
to Sandrade O'Connor leaving and getting replaced by Sam Alito,
the Supreme Court upheld the idea that you could ban.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Partial birth abortion.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
That whole debate probably saved very few babies lives. Why well,
they just changed to a different method of late term abortion.
How we regulate the abortion pill, miphipristone can have a
tens of thousands swing as far as the number of
abortions that happened.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
It's a hugely important issue.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
As I've made the point again and again and again
in my writing on this show on Right to Life Radio, miphipristone,
the abortion pill is the biggest dry of abortion in America.
It's the most important pro life issue we have, especially
now that roev Wade is overturned and we have to

(06:10):
get to the actual business of regulating abortion. It's hugely important,
and for a number of reasons. One because you know,
Roe v. Wade allows individual state governments to ban abortion
if they want. But having the abortion pill out and

(06:31):
available and portable flying around, able to be shipped through
the mail, which you can't do that with surgical abortions.
You can't ship a doctor to you. Having the abortion
pill be portable in that way and shippable massively undermines

(06:53):
the ability of state governments to regulate abortion.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Why well, first, the state govern.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
They don't want to enforce criminal punishments against the women
having the abortions.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
There's a sense that the women having.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
The abortions are often people in difficult, desperate situations. Penalizing
them is maybe not the best way of enforcing our
criminal law prohibition on abortions. So these Red states have
focused their enforcement efforts against doctors providers, people who do abortions. Well,
so what's happened. You have doctors providers of these pills

(07:33):
companies that headquarter themselves either internationally outside of Texas or
Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama jurisdiction, or even they locate
themselves in California, and they have California pass these abortion
shield laws where basically it means that you know, normally,

(07:56):
if you knock over a liquor store in El Paso, Texas,
and you flee to Los Angeles, well, the LA Cops
or the LA County sheriffs or the California Highway Patrol
and the California courts, they're going to cooperate with the
Texas authorities to arrest you. If they arrest you, they'll

(08:18):
they'll cooperate with the Texas authorities to get you shipped
back to Texas so that Texas prosecutors can prosecute you.
You've violated Texas law. You don't get a free pass
for violating Texas law just because you fled to New
Mexico or Arizona or California. Well, California has effectively passed
a law to do precisely that when it comes to abortions.

(08:42):
If you're a doctor in Texas, you perform abortion, you
flee to California, the California authorities are not going to
cooperate with the Texas authorities to.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Bring you back. And similarly, if you set up a
whole company in California whose whole purpose is to mail
the abortion pill into state where it's illegal so that
people in those states can get abortions, Texas can't touch
you because California has set up these abortion shield laws.

(09:09):
New York has set up these abortion shield laws. A
bunch of these blue states have done this. So the
existence of the abortion pill.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Its impact on American abortion numbers, which have gone up
since the overturning of Rob Wade, and they've gone up
because of the abortion pill. Rov Wade hasn't made Rovy
Wade being overturned hasn't made the number of abortions go up,
and under ordinary circumstances, I think it would have resulted

(09:41):
in the total number of American abortions going down were
it not for the aggressive efforts by Democrats to bypass
state abortion bands with the abortion pill, with illegal shipments
of the abortion pill. So when the Trump administration last
month it's FDA blithely approved an application for a new

(10:07):
generic form of the abortion pill, it got a lot
of pro lifers like me who understand the centrality of
this issue, really angry and really concerned.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Hence my article, which you can read. It's at National Review.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
You can go to Twitter dot com slash president Johnny
at Fresno Johnny, you can read the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Now, what are the issues at play?

Speaker 1 (10:33):
So the FDA approved a generic form of miphi pristone, which,
by the way, this is not the first time the
FDA has approved a generic form of mipha pristone. They
did the same thing under the first Trump administration in
twenty nineteen, and not enough pro lifers got angry about it.
Then the contention is basically this, Well, once the FDA

(10:57):
has already approved a new drug, new drug has been
introduced by pharmaceutical company. New drug is out on the market.
They've done all the necessary trials and testing and blah
blah safety.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Review blah blah blah blah blah. So the FDA has
already approved this drug.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
After a certain time frame, the company that first introduced
that drug loses the exclusive copyright ownership to that drug
and it enters basically the open market, where other companies
can start producing a version of that same exact drug,
a quote generic version.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
So think of like viagra. Okay, for a while, the.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Only the only little pill you could get for helping
yourself out, talk to your doctor if you have a lasting.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
More than four hours.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
For a long time, the only company producing that kind
of drug was Pfizer producing Viagra. After a certain timeframe,
other companies were able to produce generic versions of the
same active drug. So Cialis entered the market, and now
you got all these other companies introducing various kinds of

(12:16):
knockoff versions of Viagra and having generic drugs allows for
the total cost of the drugs to go down and
makes the drugs more available, gives you more options, blah
blah blah.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Once the FDA has already approved the original drug.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
It's approval process for a new company to make a
new generic version is fairly straightforward and almost formulaic. The
company just has to show, yes, it's the exact same drug. No,
we're not adding any new ingredients to it that are
going to alter its impact. We'll prescribe it at the
same levels, and our manufacturing process is able to do

(12:55):
it safely competently as long as you show that. The
FDA is supposed to say we approve. So that was
the defense that Robert Kennedy Junior gave. So the FDA
last month approves a new version, a new generic version
of the abortion pillman for pristone. It's approved by this

(13:18):
company called Evita Solutions, pharmaceutical company with a horribly rapidly
pro abortion statement about how they want it available to
everyone who may want it, men or women. Why would
men need abortion pills if not to give them to

(13:38):
the mothers of their children. A sort of ominous message
if you ask me anyway. So Avida Solutions applies for
gets the approval from the FDA for producing this generic
form of the abortion pill, and Robert Kennedy Junior takes
to Twitter to defend this because all these pro lifers

(13:58):
are very upset, and he says, listen, we the Biden
administration acted recklessly to approve miphi pristone being shipped out
without doing any shipped out through the mails, without any
additional safety review, and that's bad. And we're doing a
health and safety review, which the administration announced just last month.

(14:19):
It started this big health and safety review of the
abortion pill of MEPhI pristone and its impact.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
But the problem is that we at the FDA, you know,
our hands are tied here.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
If a company seeks an approval for a generic form
of a drug that's already approved, you know, there's nothing
we can do. They kind of are entitled to an
approval for their generic version of the drug. So Kennedy's
trying to do damage control, and honestly, out of everybody
in the administration, McCary Kennedy, Trump, Kennedy is sounded the

(14:53):
best on the abortion pill, which is odd given how
you know, Kennedy was a very run of the mill
pro abortion Democrat for years. Although it is funny how
he sort of stuck in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
He just Robert Kennedy is really just.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
A nineteen nineties Democrat, and the rest of his party
moved way to the left of him. In so many ways,
Kennedy is much easier to understand. If you just think
this guy is a nineteen nineties Democrat, it really helps
you to understand him. Now when we return, I want

(15:30):
to talk about why some of what Kennedy says encourages me,
but I just don't believe it. And I think that
the Trump administration fundamentally, while it's done a number of
excellent pro life things, especially the first Trump administration got
Rovy Wade overturned, and we can't ignore that, and we
can't not acknowledge that, but I think the Trump administration

(15:54):
is really not understanding how almost nothing else matters right
now in abortion politics other than how you regulate the
abortion pill MiFi pristone.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's next on the John Girardi Show.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
The FDA last month approved a new generic version of
the abortion pill MiFi pristone. The FDA, well HHS Secretary
Robert Kennedy Junior, tries to claim the FDA's hands are tied.
This is a drug that was already approved by the FDA.
When you have a drug that's already approved by the FDA,
and someone applies for a generic, it's sort of formulaic.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
You have to give it to him.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
I'm not so sure. And as I've said, how we
regulate the abortion pill MiFi pristone, which is the most
common form of abortion in America. Sixty three percent of
abortions happened through MIFA pristone, through the abortion pill, not
through surgical abortions. How we regulate the abortion pill can
have a tens of thousands of abortions per year impact

(16:57):
on the total number of American abortions.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Don't believe me.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Well, at the start of the Biden administration, we had
nine hundred thousand abortions per year. By the end of
the Biden administration, after Biden changed the rules to allow
the abortion pill to be Amazon primed, get your abortions
Amazon primed your way, have a telemedicine visit instead of
an in person visit with a doctor, get your prescription

(17:23):
via telemedicine, and then have it shipped to you through
the mail rather than you go to a clinic. Since
that happened, the total number of American abortions has jumped
by one hundred thousand per year. We're now at like
a million plus abortions per year. So it's a big deal.
It's a how the FDA regulates the abortion pill has

(17:47):
a massive, tangible, huge swing in numbers, inducing impact on
the total.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Number of American abortions.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Almost more so, more so and more clearly than almost
any policy change you can make with regards to abortion.
And as much as President Trump has said, you know,
I want states to decide.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
I want states to decide. I want states to decide
what to do about abortion, this is a federal thing.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
How the Federal Food and Drug Administration regulates this drug
that's on the national market. It's not a thing that
Texas can regulate. It's not a thing that Oklahoma or
Wyoming or Mississippi or Alabama or Louisiana can regulate.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
It has to be regulated by the FEDS.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
So when the FDA just blithely approves another generic version
of the abortion pill, and it's the FDA of a
purportedly pro life administration, it gets some of us ticked. Now,
I had some questions that arose out of this one. Really,
the FDA couldn't have delayed approving this abortion pill generic version.

(18:57):
The FDA has announced last month it's like a week
before they approve this generic form of the abortion pill,
that they're doing an extensive health and safety review of
the abortion pill, which there's new evidence out to indicate
that it's much more dangerous than people thought. Why would
they approve a generic when they haven't finished this new

(19:17):
health and safety review?

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Why not wait?

Speaker 1 (19:22):
And I guess the characterization that Kennedy has made that
all we have to approve this, I just don't buy
that characterization. And I've seen the Trump administration use super creative.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Lawyering for all kinds of other priorities.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
It really believes in be willing to take things to
the courts and fight it out, but not here. Not
here for some reason. Two, why are we bothering with
a health and safety review of mifrolpristone at all before
deciding what to do?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Why hasn't the Trump administration just acted? And I say
this because what a lot of pro lifers and conservatives
and conservative legal thinkers have been arguing for the last
several years is that the various approvals that the abortion
pill got over the course of its history. So it
was originally approved in two thousand under Bill Clinton, Barack

(20:15):
Obama loosened the health and safety restrictions around it in
twenty sixteen, allowing it to be distributed through ten weeks
of pregnancy rather than seven, allowing it to be prescribed
with only one in patient in person patient visit rather
than three which was the original standard, getting rid of
its health and safety reporting requirements other than deaths, and

(20:36):
then Biden in twenty twenty one allowing the abortion pill
to be prescribed with no in person appointment whatsoever, just
with a telemedicine visit and have the pill shipped to you,
you know, Amazon, primifying your abortion conservatives in the legal
field and pro life legal people. Conservative legal folks have

(20:56):
been arguing that those various FDA acts were not just bad,
they were illegal. They were unlawfully done. The original approval
of mifipristone was done with this expedited FDA approval process
that is designed for serious or life threatening illnesses. What

(21:17):
serious or life threatening illness does the abortion pill treat? Pregnancy?
It's not an illness. Secondly, the twenty sixteen and twenty
twenty one loosening of safety restrictions around the abortion pill,
the FDA didn't actually consider any health or safety data

(21:41):
from the use of the abortion pill under the newly
proposed loosened safety standards. So they approved lesson safety standards
with no evidence. Again, a violation of their own rules
for how they're supposed to do things. So why does
the Trump administration, you know, they waited around? So Trump

(22:04):
gets into office in January. McCary Marty McCary, the head
of the FDA, and Robert Kennedy, the head of HHS,
they say in their confirmation hearings in January and February,
you know we're going to do this health and safety
review of my pristone. Why didn't they announce it in March?
Why did we wait all the way until September? And
why are we bothering with the health and safety review?

(22:26):
Our contention is that Obama, that is that Clinton, Obama
and Biden all of their actions with the abortion pill
were of questionable legality to begin with. Why not just
reverse those decisions? Why not restrict the abortion pill in

(22:47):
other ways? Why not restrict its shipment through the mail,
which the president could do with the Comstock Act. It's
a federal law that was passed under Ulysses grant that
prohibits shipping abortion pills through the mail.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (23:02):
When we return, I'm gonna answer why not. Fundamentally, I
think the Trump administration is transactionally pro life, not necessarily
sincerely pro life. And I think that Trump just doesn't
really care about this issue very much.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
And I'll get into it more. And this is not
necessarily to blame Trump.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Maybe it is a little bit, but I think it's
just to understand the calculus that Trump is using, a
calculus that I hope pro lifers can change for him.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
That is next on the John Girardi Show.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
So I have this piece out in National Review where
I'm asking the question, why is the Trump administration not
doing more to restrict the abortion film if a pristone.
It's the most important issue as it relates to abortion
right now in the country. It nothing else impacts abortion
numbers like it. And the Trump administration has moved extremely slowly.
It hasn't done very much. It isn't signaling that it's

(24:01):
going to do much. It approved a new generic form
of MIPHI pristone. Why why isn't Trump acting more on this?
And I think the answer is, as I wrote for
National Review this week, it's one of two things. Either
Trump does not really care about this issue much or

(24:22):
he actively supports having the abortion pill on the market.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Now. I hope it's not the latter option. It would
be wrong to say there's no evidence of it though.
So again, nothing impacts the numbers of abortion like mephipristone.
It's the single biggest driver of abortion in America. At
the start of the Biden administration, when it couldn't be
shipped through the mail and you had to go in

(24:48):
person to get it, we had nine hundred thousand abortions
per year. By the end of the Biden administration, when
you could Amazon Prime basically your own abortion, get a tallemedicine,
visit with a doctor to get the abortion pill prescribed
to you, and then have it shipped to you in
the mail. By the end of the Biden administration, we
were up again from nine hundred thousand to a million

(25:10):
abortions per year. And everyone credits miff for pristone for it,
even the pro abortion side does, the pro life side does.
Abortion is just easier to get because of how the
Biden administration and its FDA changed the rules for the
abortion pill. Pro Lifers should expect a Republican administration a
pro life Republican administration to flip that back. Trump hasn't

(25:33):
done it.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Why During the campaign, and let's remember what was going
on in the campaign, Republicans were totally spooked by the
abortion issue. Republicans had lost several bad statewide elections, particularly
in Ohio, in which states had passed state constitutional amendments

(25:57):
to enshrine legal abortion into their ste constitution. And those
efforts are still ongoing. Virginia is going to try to
do something like that soon. And as a result, Trump
didn't want to be anywhere close to the abortion issue.
He just didn't want to talk about it. He wanted

(26:18):
to run as far away from it.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
As he could.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
In June, I think it was June of twenty twenty four,
Trump has his famous debate with Joe Biden, where, you know,
the big headline from that debate was Biden revealing to
the whole world that well, I guess he had sort
of been revealing it to the whole world for a
long time and the media just completely tried to ignore it.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Revealed inescapably to the whole world that he was senile.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
During that debate, Trump was asked a question about a
recent Supreme Court case FDA versus Alliance for Hipocratic Medicine. Now,
this was a case where you had doctors who were
arguing that the FDA had run only approved the abortion pill,
that its FDA approval was done through an illegal mechanism,

(27:09):
its original approval in two thousand, and the weakening of
its safety standards that happened in twenty sixteen under Barack
Obama and in twenty twenty one under Joe Biden. That
those were unlawfully done, not just we didn't like them,
not that just it was a moral not that it
was bad, that they genuinely didn't follow appropriate regulatory law

(27:30):
to get it initially approved in the year two thousand
under Bill Clinton, and to loosen the safety restrictions in
twenty sixteen and twenty twenty one. The case made it
all the way to the Supreme Court. It was brought
in the Northern District of Texas. It's a very conservative
judicial district. It was reviewed by the Northern District of Texas,

(27:53):
which said, yeah, it was completely unlawfully approved. It got
appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which here's
the appeals from Texas and Louisiana.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
I think maybe a couple other states, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said, well, we think
that the statute of limitations has run out to challenge
the original approval of the abortion pill back in the
year two thousand, but the twenty sixteen and twenty twenty
one loosening of regulations, we agree those were unlawfully done.
It got appealed to the US Supreme Court, and in
June of twenty twenty four, the US Supreme Court said, well,

(28:32):
we can't actually decide this issue because we think that
the doctors who brought the lawsuit don't have.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Standing to sue.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Basically, they say they didn't touch the actual substance of
the question whether the FDA had lawfully approved the abortion pill.
They just said, look, doctors, individual doctors don't have the
standing to sue the FDA for its approval of drugs,
for its loosening or strengthening of health and safety standards.

(29:02):
They don't have standing to sue. They're not the right plaintiff.
They haven't suffered the kind of cognizable harm that allows.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Them to sue.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
So no, we're not gonna even We're not gonna even
touch the substance of this question, and that was a
nine to nothing Supreme Court decision. They just said, these
doctors don't have standing to sue. Trump, however, was asked
about that Supreme Court decision and said the following quote,

(29:33):
First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.
Now that's not what the Supreme Court did. Supreme Court
didn't say anything about the abortion pill. They just said,
these doctors who are challenging the legal standing of the
abortion bill, they don't have the standing to sue. So
we're gonna have to leave things as they are, with
no comment on whether the FDA approved the abortion bill
correctly or not. But that's how Trump characterized it. Trump again, quote,

(29:58):
first of all, the Supreme Court just proved the abortion pill,
and I agree with their decision to have done that,
and I will not block it. A little later, jd
Vance was asked on NBC News, do you agree with
the abortion pill being accessible? Jad Vance says, yes, I do.

(30:22):
So there's some evidence that the Trump administration is hunky
dory with the abortion pill. Now I don't think that's
a complete picture, and I don't think that's totally fair
to Trump.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
A couple of things.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
First, a lot of pro lifers would try to argue, Look,
Trump said what he had to say to win, and
now he's going to govern in a more pro life direction.
Now that's a little bit cynical. You know, he's just
kind of lying during the campaign, and then he's going
to do something else, you know, run to the center
during the campaign and then govern more conservatively. Kind of
lie during the campaign and do what he's going to

(30:58):
do during his presidency. There is, however, some merit that
that's kind of precisely what the Trump administration has done now,
not necessarily lying, but I mean, one of the things
I was upset about during the campaign was the Trump
administration made no commitments for basically any pro life policies whatsoever.
They took everything out of the Republican platform that had

(31:19):
anything to do with the specifics of abortion policy. Nothing
about the Mexico City all of the sort of traditional
executive actions that Republican presidents put in place to limit
federal funding for NGOs that perform abortions abroad, the Mexico
City Policy as it's called, all of the executive actions
about abortions in the military. The Trump administration or the

(31:41):
Republican Party rather said nothing about any of it in
the Republican platform, which was a big departure. I mean,
the twenty sixteen Republican platform is super long and super
specific on all these different points that the campaign was
going to pursue. Not so in the twenty twenty platform.

(32:02):
And yet after Trump won, he did all of those
things and more. Trump got in allowed into the One
Big Beautiful Bill Act a provision to cut Planned Parenthood
off from federal funding, and he would have cut them
off from federal funding more or less permanently or for

(32:23):
ten years, except he lost too many Republicans in the Senate,
and the bill ultimately could only pass if Lisa Murkowski
signed on, and Lisa Murkowski weakened it and reduced it
down to just one year rather than ten years of
being defunded. So Trump has governed more pro life than

(32:44):
he campaigned. And I will say that Trump's position that
what he said about MIFPH pristone was I will not
block it. I will not block its availability.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Vance said, I'm okay with it being accessible.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
That does give the administration some wiggle room to reinstate
really restrictive health and safety standards on the abortion pill.
And if you do that, it'll make it much less
readily accessible. It won't be as accessible as a you know,
an Amazon Prime package. Again, which is the main problem
is that the Biden administration Amazon primified abortion to allow

(33:22):
it to be shipped through the mail, to allow you
to get it prescribed to you without ever leaving your house.
I mean, like, why do do Americans buy more? Like
there's all kinds of consumer crap that Americans buy a
lot more of today because they don't have to get
up off of their butt.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
They can look at their.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Phone, scroll through Amazon, see a thing, click on a thing,
buy the thing, have it shipped to their house. There's
a lot more purchases like that that get made because
of Amazon Prime. Well, the same phenomenon happened with the abortion.
So why is Trump not acting very aggressively here? I

(34:07):
think he's not acting aggressively because his political calculus for
pro life stuff has always been a certain way. Okay,
is Trump a sincere pro lifer? I don't think so.
Now do you need him to be a sincere pro lifer? Well,
he's not a very sincere pro lifer, and yet he's

(34:29):
he got Roby Wade overturned.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
So I mean how sincere do you need him to be?

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Frankly, I don't think any Republican president has been very
sincere on the abortion issue at all.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
The reason why is you look at all their wives.
Every Republican president.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Who's talked about the dignity instructive of human life, all
of their wives are pro choice.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
You know Ronald Reagan, oh yes, it has this massive
conversion on the life issue right before he runs for
president as a Republican needs all those Southern Baptists to
vote for him, all those conservative Catholics to vote for him,
you know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
I hope some of those Republican presidents were sincere.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
I hope George W. Bush was sincere. I hope Ronald
Reagan was sincere. I don't know how sincere they were.
So I don't think Trump is sincerely a pro lifer. Okay,
he only discovered that he was pro life when he
decided he was going to run for president.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Even in the twenty twenty four campaign, he's like, I.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Think abortions should maybe be legal for the first couple
of weeks.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I don't know how many weeks.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
So he's not very pro life. I mean He said
that pretty explicitly during the twenty twenty four campaign. But
he's not a dummy, and he understands that he's only
president because pro lifers backed him, and he, very smartly
in twenty sixteen understood what he had to do to
court their vote, especially given that he wasn't he was

(35:55):
perceived as pro choice in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
What does he do?

Speaker 1 (36:00):
He gives a list, these are the kinds of guys
ALL appoint guys and gals I'll appoint to the Supreme Court.
I'm gonna pick from this list vote for me, which
was brilliant, and guess what is Unlike every other Republican president,
he went three for three. On the other hand, Trump's

(36:22):
transactional pro life approach is this way. I will do
this if it's necessary to keep my base happy. I
don't want to do stuff if it's going to be
broadly politically unpopular.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
And that's the calculus here.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
I think he thinks if I aggressively regulate the abortion pill,
it's going to really hurt us electorally popularity wise. So
I think that explains what Trump is doing. I think
he's gonna wait until after the twenty twenty six midterms
to do anything. I think he's gonna kind of string
this along and play a real slow and then he'll

(37:02):
have some kind of regulations on the abortion pill. All
I want to say is I want to keep pushing.
I want whatever influence I have. We have a very
limited window of a one term presidency to change how
abortion is regulated.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
We need to take advantage of it.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
It's a precious opportunity and tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands of lives hang in the balance. Closing thoughts right
after this on the John Girardi Show, I think someone
might listen to this show and be.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Like, John Girardi hates Trump.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
He's just criticizing Trump for all his Why is he
attacking Trump for not, you know, going more aggressively against
miff for pristone. I want Trump to be successful. I
want Trump to be the most pro life president in history.
That's why I write stuff like this, and that's why
I talk about the stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
I want him to be successful.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
I know we have a chance with him, and we
have no chance with Akamala Harris, with the Joe Biden,
et cetera. He only has four years. We gotta take
advantage of this. He needs to do more to restrict
the abortion pill.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
That'll do it. John Jorroady shows see next time on
Power Talk