The Antiabortion Movement Has a New Plan for a National Abortion Ban

A network of antiabortion organizations is pressuring Todd Blanche to use the Justice Department to advance long-sought attacks on medication abortion.

Updated Aug. 4, 2026, at 8:45 a.m. PT: In a party line vote of 12-10, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Todd Blanche’s nomination. A full Senate vote is expected in the coming days.

Judges, lawyers and sexual abuse survivors have raised very strong reasons why it would be reckless and unconscionable for the Senate to confirm Todd Blanche to the post of attorney general of the United States. One of the under-reported issues, though, is Blanche’s backing from well-funded antiabortion groups.

With Blanche’s confirmation hearing scheduled to begin Wednesday, July 15, antiabortion groups have started a pressure campaign to ensure Blanche’s commitment to settle abortion access related cases, especially those that could severely restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone—the most commonly used method of abortion in the United States. One such suit at the center of these pressure campaigns is Louisiana v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which seeks to end telehealth approval for mifepristone.  

Notably, during the first week of May, while Americans awaited the Roberts Court’s decision on whether or not the dispensation of mifepristone through telehealth would continue as Louisiana challenged the policy in court, national antiabortion groups held a closed-door meeting with a “high-ranking” official at the Department of Justice, where Blanche was serving as acting attorney general.

During the meeting, antiabortion leaders pushed the DOJ to revive the Comstock Act, a draconian 19th-century anti-vice law that could act as a backdoor national abortion ban and could also decimate access to other facets of reproductive health, like birth control and IVF.

Kristan Hawkins, the head of the Leonard Leo-tied antiabortion group called Students for Life of America who attended the meeting at DOJ, told her followers on social media, “We were assured that multiple conversations have in fact been had about the Comstock Act … they’ve been looking into it. We presented them a memo showing them exactly what needed to be done and could be done.”  

Below you will find information on the federal case and parties involved as well as other groups and people who are capitalizing on Blanche’s potential confirmation to drive their antiabortion agenda. If the Republican Congress confirms Blanche, he could weaponize the DOJ in service of the antiabortion machine’s wish list, increasing the potential for some of the biggest blows to abortion access since Dobbs. 

The Campaign to Pressure Blanche to Settle Louisiana v. FDA

In July, a group of 14 women signed a letter urging Blanche to settle Louisiana v. FDA. Their letter reads similarly to the one written by more than 80 antiabortion groups pressuring Blanche to intercede on behalf of and “side with” the alleged victim Rosalie Markezich and the state of Louisiana in limiting access to the abortion medication.

Republican Attorneys General Association member—a group whose biggest funder is Leo’s network—and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed Louisiana v. FDA on behalf of Markezich, who alleged her boyfriend “coerced” her into taking abortion medication to terminate her pregnancy. By relying so heavily on Markezich’s story, these women give the impression that they too were allegedly “coerced,” but some admitted to taking abortion medication of their own volition, while others have been long-time antiabortion operatives. 

The Antis’ Manufacturing of Louisiana v. FDA 

Louisiana v. FDA, much like the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade, has been manufactured by an antiabortion network backed by billionaires. The dark money groups propping up the case have been relentless in their attacks on mifepristone.  

After a federal judge paused Louisiana’s attempt to make it harder for people around the country to get an abortion until after the FDA’s review of mifepristone—a medication that has been proven safe and regulated by the FDA for over 25 years—Murrill asked the Fifth Circuit to stop telehealth abortion pill prescriptions. This is the same court whose antiabortion judges, like James Ho, previously ruled that access to mifepristone should be curtailed and issued a ruling in favor of Markezich and the state of Louisiana in a previous iteration of the case.

The two companies that manufacture mifepristone petitioned the Roberts Court to take on the case, which it initially did only to then punt it back to the lower court during the presidential election year, doing President Donald Trump yet another political solid by keeping telehealth access intact until after this year’s elections. 

Erin Morrow Hawley, who has been involved in every major antiabortion case since Dobbs and is married to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, joined and argued the case in federal court. Markezich, whose story has been amplified by the national antiabortion machine, then asked to join Louisiana v. FDA, alleging that her then-boyfriend ordered abortion medication and coerced her into taking the pill after they found out she was pregnant.

In addition to being added to the motion to intervene with Louisiana, Markezich’s allegations have been used as the basis for criminal charges against Dr. Remy Coeytaux, a California doctor whom the Louisiana AG accused of enabling a “coerced” abortion by prescribing abortion medication. 

Antiabortion groups and politicians have been seemingly so desperate to cloak their anti-woman and anti-democratic efforts in a veneer of “concern for women” that they have been using Markezich’s story to drum up opposition to the abortion pill cloaked in concern for domestic abusers using the medication to “coerce” women into abortions. Never mind how research has shown time and again that abortion bans have a negative physical and socioeconomic impact on women forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. Or that the leading cause of death for pregnant people is homicide through intimate partner violence.

If antiabortion zealots were genuinely concerned about the health and well-being of pregnant women, they would be focused on the massive risk of long-term harm and physical violence for those who choose to carry their pregnancies to term.  

Ignoring all of this, antiabortion groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, Embrace Life, Life Leadership Conference and others have latched onto and leeched off of Markezich’s alleged claim to drive their attack against abortion medication.

Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom is one of the firms listed in the motion to intervene on the case, with Erin Hawley serving as a “pro hac vice,” an out-of-state attorney. (Hawley is currently Of Counsel for ADF, a formal title in law firms and legal nonprofits for a senior-level lawyer who is affiliated with the organization but is not a partner, principal or full-time staff attorney in the usual sense.)

The firm, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, has also used Markezich’s story as a fundraising tactic and to promote the “coercion” line of messaging used by antiabortion groups and politicians. ADF has a reputation not only for judge shopping but also for client shopping to promote its antiabortion, anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.   

ADF is the engine behind a theocratic legal agenda, which, according to their most recently available IRS filing, had an annual revenue of over $119 million in 2024-2025. The majority of ADF’s funding comes from donor-advised funds, dark money pass-throughs that obfuscate donors’ identities.  

In addition to creating the legal roadmap to overturn federal abortion protections in the Dobbs case, ADF represented the plaintiff in the first attempt to eliminate access to mifepristone, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and represented Idaho in Moyle v. U.S., the case that attempted to weaken the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, also known as EMTALA. Trump has since revoked the Biden administration’s EMTALA protections.  

This group is also behind some of the most draconian antiabortion model legislation. For instance, ADF and Erin Hawley played a significant role in drafting Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban as part of the legal strategy it crafted to overturn Roe. ADF was also behind the dystopian antiabortion legislation that was proposed in Oklahoma in 2024, which would have allowed for the creation of a state database to track anyone who receives abortion healthcare.  

ADF is also an advisory member of Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook that Trump spent most of the election campaign distancing himself from, only to follow its wish list closely during his second term. Like the Oklahoma legislation ADF drafted, Project 2025 calls for increased federal surveillance of pregnant people and those who have sought abortion healthcare. According to Reproductive Freedom for All, nearly 58 percent of Project 2025’s antiabortion-related policies have either been enacted or are underway.  

Sen. Hawley and the Hawleys’ Antiabortion Initiative  

Sen. Hawley has led the charge against mifepristone in Congress. This includes using a pseudo-scientific report from the antiabortion group Ethics and Public Policy Center as the basis for legislation he introduced to help further eliminate abortion access for Americans. He has also not one but two pieces of legislation calling on Congress to ban mifepristone. Sen. Hawley held a press conference to promote his more recent legislation where Markezich was in attendance. 

Sen. Hawley is leveraging his support for Blanche by suggesting it is contingent on Blanche’s willingness to intervene in cases related to mifepristone, doing both him and Erin an antiabortion favor. Sen. Hawley is in a position of power to demand Blanche’s acquiescence, given that Blanche can only afford to lose one GOP vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

In December 2025, Axios broke the news that the Hawleys launched a new dark money group focused on antiabortion efforts, initially called Love Life Initiative but that has since been renamed to Embrace Life. The group will focus on undermining pro-abortion access state ballot measures and promoting what have been dubbed “pronatalist” policies that support a heteronormative, cisgender, nuclear family model.  

In 2026, Missourians will vote on an antiabortion constitutional amendment, just two years after the state voted to enshrine abortion access into its constitution. In an effort to ostensibly confuse Missourians, both the pro-choice amendment from 2024 and the antiabortion amendment of 2026 share the same name—Amendment 3.

Missouri has become a testing ground for the antiabortion movement, from antiabortion legislation to litigation that could influence abortion access beyond the state’s borders, and the Hawleys are prioritizing Missouri, likely due to the additional antiabortion levers and bad actors already positioned in the state. 

It is unclear who is bankrolling Embrace Life. The group was incorporated in Louisiana with Melissa Stone, Shannon Dirmann and Melissa Mann listed as directors. The initiative is housed in the same building as Students for Fair Admissions, which is run by Ed Blum, the far-right lawyer who has used his network to impose his own personal anti-DEI, anti-trans agenda on all Americans by weaponizing the legal system. 

Leo and his allies also gave $30 million to a new antiabortion umbrella operation calling itself the Life Leadership Conference last year. Leo’s new antiabortion venture grew out of the antiabortion machine’s frustration with how popular state abortion amendments were in safeguarding abortion access, including in Missouri.

While there is no evidence yet, the ties between Leo’s network and Erin and Josh Hawley suggest that the Hawleys’ group’s focus on abortion ballot initiatives could potentially be connected to the Life Leadership Conference.

Additionally, the Life Leadership Conference platformed Erin Hawley for an “emergency nationwide pro-life webcast” in support of unregulated pregnancy centers, the evening before Erin was set to argue before the Roberts Court in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin, a case that after the Roberts Court ultimately ruled in favor of First Choice makes it harder to hold unregulated pregnancy centers and their donors to account.  

The Life Leadership Conference was incubated through the Pro-Life Venture Fund, according to right-wing media that referred to the fund by name but did not provide additional details about how it operates. These reports also pointed to antiabortion activists Robbie George, Raymond Ruddy and Leo as the backers of this new venture, determined to further erode our reproductive rights at the federal and state levels. It is unclear what type of legal entity the fund is, as it is not registered as a PAC and tax forms have yet to be filed for the entity.

Helming the conference and serving as the face of this project is long-time antiabortion extremist David Bereit. According to Bereit, the group was created to further restrict Americans’ access to abortion healthcare, despite the fact that the majority of Americans believe in this freedom to make reproductive decisions without government interference. 

Other Antiabortion Groups Pressuring Blanche 

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a national antiabortion group headed by Marjorie Dannenfelser, who advised Trump on his antiabortion policies during his first term, helmed the letter of more than 80 antiabortion groups calling on Blanche to side with Markezich and the state of Louisiana. Other national groups that signed on include Students for Life of America and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. These groups have been involved with not only the coordinated attacks conducted by the Life Leadership Conference but each group also has ties to Leo and Project 2025.  

For example, groups within Leo’s network—the Concord Fund (also known as the Judicial Crisis Network), 85 Fund, America Engaged, Napa Institute and Wellspring Committee—have collectively given SBA-PLA almost $5 million in recent years. Leo and Ruddy both sat on SFLA’s board until 2023. Leo is still a member of EPPC’s board.  

Relatedly, each of these groups served as an advisory member to Project 2025. The antiabortion policies proposed in Project 2025 included getting the FDA to reverse its 26-year approval of mifepristone, while also pushing for a de facto national ban on medication abortion by having the next administration enforce the draconian Comstock Act.  

Blanche’s confirmation could mean the further decimation of access to abortion healthcare in the United States at the behest of the antiabortion machine, which has already successfully pressured the Trump administration to meet its demands by, for example, calling for FDA head Martin Mackary to be fired. Meanwhile, the antiabortion machine is ratcheting up the pressure to push its agenda at various levels across the U.S.

Reasonable members of Congress who believe in the independence of the DOJ from outside pressure, including that of the administration itself, will vote to oppose Blanche’s nomination for U.S. attorney general. 

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