America’s biggest anti-abortion lobby has dramatically turned on Donald Trump—with its powerful leader describing the president as “the problem” facing her movement.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, 60, president of the influential Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, was once one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants on abortion, even chairing his Pro-Life Coalition during his 2016 White House run. But three years after a conservative Supreme Court tore up Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions has risen, mifepristone pills are sent freely through the U.S. mail, and her movement is livid.
“Trump is the problem. The president is the problem,” Dannenfelser told the Wall Street Journal in a striking intervention from a woman who once led Trump’s pro-life ground game.
In an address to donors at her group’s gala in D.C. on Wednesday, the Journal reported, Dannenfelser warned that if Republicans keep allowing individual states to decide abortion policy, “then the movement as we know it is finished.”
Her organization is now plotting a $160 million war chest for the this year’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential primaries—but will only back candidates who commit to “pro-life action at the national level.”
Anger is rippling through the movement. Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, branded it “unprecedented” that Republican states are now hauling a Republican administration into court over their own abortion bans. Marc Wheat, general counsel for Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom, told the Journal the situation was “just insulting” and “not what we voted for.”
The fury is largely aimed at Trump’s own appointees—FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who have left untouched Biden-era policies that allow clinicians to prescribe mifepristone via telehealth and post the pills to women across state lines. Makary’s FDA also waved through a generic mifepristone tablet last fall.
Dannenfelser publicly called for Makary’s head in December, and Pence demanded the same for Kennedy, branding the HHS secretary “a progressive wolf in pro-life sheep’s clothing,” the Journal reported.
A federal appeals court handed the movement a rare win on Friday, barring Louisiana doctors from posting Mifepristone without an in-person consultation. Dannenfelser fired back that it was “shameful” that the administration’s inaction had pushed pro-life states into the federal courts.
White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster defended Trump, 79, to the Journal as “the most pro-life and pro-family president in history” and said the agency was reviewing Mifepristone amid “widespread concerns” over its safety.
But the once-loyal Dannenfelser told the Journal she rang Trump earlier this year to push back on his call for “flexibility” on the Hyde Amendment—and was sent straight to voicemail.
White House spokesperson Allison Schuster told the Daily Beast: “President Trump is proud to be the most pro-life and pro-family President in history. The Trump Administration just recently announced a series of bold actions to safeguard life and uphold Americans’ fundamental freedoms, including policies long-sought by the pro-life movement to end the federal funding of abortion abroad. Under the President’s leadership, the FDA is responding to widespread concerns about mifepristone with a Gold Standard Science-based safety review. Since his first term, the President has been a proven leader in the pro-life movement, and he will continue to champion these policies to protect the sanctity of life.”
