Todd Blanche Wants to Finish What “Dobbs” Started |
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Todd Blanche Wants to Finish What Dobbs Started
In a private call before his confirmation vote, the AG said Trump officials are working to make the decision ending the national right to abortion “permanent in every single state.”
Todd Blanche Wants to Finish What “Dobbs” Started
In a private call before his confirmation vote, the acting AG said Trump officials aim to make the decision ending the national right to abortion “permanent in every single state.”
Todd Blanche during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on August 5, 2026.
When the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade, its defenders insisted the ruling was an act of judicial restraint and a decision that returned the question of abortion to democratic majorities in each state. The United States’ top lawyer, Todd Blanche, apparently has other ideas.
On a July 30 conference call hosted by the White House Faith Office —not meant for public ears, though the audio later surfaced on YouTube—the acting attorney general told religious leaders that the administration is working to ensure that the Dobbs decision “becomes permanent in every single state.” He acknowledged that “we don’t have complete victory yet,” but promised the faithful, “Victory will be soon and it will be permanent.”
Blanche seems to have in mind a project that goes far beyond enforcing existing federal law or upholding current state abortion laws. Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department could use the agency as a tool to impose abortion restrictions on all states, even those that protect reproductive rights through their own democratic processes and state Constitutions.
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The primary tool Blanche has signaled deploying is the Comstock Act, an archaic federal law passed in 1873 that made it a federal crime to mail any “thing” to “procure an abortion,” including pills but also any article used in abortion care. For most of the 20th century,........