Abortion Opponents Warn Trump: Hold The Line Or Risk Midterms ‘devastation’

The anti-abortion movement's embrace of President Donald Trump paid them major dividends in his first term: The Supreme Court justices he appointed overturned Roe v. Wade, and state abortion bans swept the country.

But a year into his second term, with little movement on their top policy priorities and mounting frustration with Trump’s rhetoric on government funding of abortion, IVF, and other hot-button issues, some activists are questioning the alliance — and their own place within the GOP.

Trump’s recent revelation that he fears being impeached if Republicans lose the fall midterms has only strengthened abortion opponents’ belief that 2026 races can provide them powerful leverage to push the president to take their demands more seriously.

To reassert their influence, leading abortion opponents are threatening to redirect or withhold some of their pledged tens of millions in midterms spending and the labor of their volunteer armies. Others are exploring backing primary campaigns against any Republicans they view as too soft on the issue. And in both public statements and private talks with the administration, conservative activists are speaking directly to Trump’s fears of a blue wave.

If Republicans fail to keep abortion opponents in their camp, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “[Trump will] be impeached, and every one of his Cabinet secretaries will be dragged in for committee hearings on every day that ends in Y, and the result will be nothing happens in the next two years. So there's a lot riding on this.”

Perkins said Trump’s recent call for lawmakers to be “flexible” on the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion, in ongoing negotiations on Obamacare subsidies has exacerbated tensions with the administration.

“This type of rhetoric runs the risk of moving this party from a majority party to a minority party,” he said. “With elections being so close, you don't want people being frustrated or disappointed. You want people motivated.”

In competitive House races that could decide who controls Congress for the rest of Trump’s term, anti-abortion groups argue they could sway the outcome if they halt their door-knocking campaigns and other efforts to get out the vote.

White House aides, however, are skeptical that anti-abortion groups will scale back their electoral efforts or that voters motivated by abortion will stay home. Doing so, they argue, would usher Democrats into office and produce even worse outcomes for the anti-abortion movement.

“The alternative here to what is still objectively a pro-life and pro-family administration — and pro-life and pro-family president — is a party that ran on abortions with no restrictions whatsoever,” one White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration’s thinking, said. “The choice here is very clear, I think, if you’re someone on the pro-life side of things.”

The official added that Trump’s remarks on Hyde were not about lawmakers “being flexible on their ideological convictions.” Passing some sort of health care policy is “going to be a contentious thing” that requires bipartisan support, the official said, adding that the president was encouraging lawmakers to think about how to “be more creative” in achieving legislation that could lower health insurance costs for millions and boost Republican chances in November.

On a strategy call Monday night, the leaders of the nation’s biggest anti-abortion groups urged their followers to flood the Senate phone lines as the chamber weighs whether to revive the subsidies and, if so, ban any insurance plan that receives them from covering abortion.

They suggested focusing the pressure campaign on Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina — three states with large anti-abortion activist communities and upcoming Senate races that could decide control of the chamber. Missouri, which will vote this fall on yet another abortion referendum, is also on their list.

One of the groups’ targets, Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, is working with members on both sides of the aisle on a compromise proposal that reportedly includes stricter enforcement of Obamacare’s original guardrails but no new ones. The Affordable Care Act requires any insurance plan that covers abortion to do so using separate state or private funding.

Abortion opponents on the Monday call rejected that idea, and said they will be satisfied with nothing less than a blanket national ban on any insurance plan that covers abortion receiving any federal subsidy.

“Without it being in statute, without it being written into the law, no gimmick or executive order will work,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which has promised to spend $80 million in the midterms.

SBA leaders told POLITICO that the group will not campaign for candidates who vote for an extension of Obamacare subsidies without additional abortion restrictions. That includes the 17 House Republicans who voted in favor of Democrats’ “clean” extension last week.

The anti-abortion movement is also looking beyond Trump to his potential successors.

Several groups have requested meetings with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as other possible presidential contenders, including several GOP senators, governors and wealthy businessmen. Though those meetings have yet to take place, abortion opponents are already discussing how to convince these 2028 presidential hopefuls to commit to a “statement of principles.”

“The pro-life movement is looking at 2028, looking at the future of the Republican Party and [they’re] concerned that if they don’t do anything to show that they have some independence — that they’re not just an appendix on the MAGA movement — that they’re just going to be taken for granted,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank. “They have to flex their muscles a little bit.”

Following Trump’s remarks on Hyde, anti-abortion activists released a barrage of public letters and private entreaties to the Trump administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill, demanding they refuse any subsidies deal that doesn’t ban federal funding going to plans that cover abortion — even if those plans use other funding to do so.

“It would be impossible to overstate how upset people were,” one anti-abortion leader, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, told POLITICO. “That statement ripped like wildfire through a million conversations and channels and chats and emails.”

In response, several GOP leaders who rarely break with Trump, including Speaker Mike Johnson, quickly denounced the call to be flexible on Hyde and vowed to push for anti-abortion restrictions in the ongoing negotiations on Obamacare subsidies. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also appeared to walk back the president’s remarks in a recent press briefing, saying the president’s support for Hyde remains unchanged and the call for flexibility was aimed at both Democrats and Republicans.

But when the House voted last week to revive the subsidies without additional abortion restrictions, the bill passed with the support of 17 Republicans defectors, and some GOP senators are now weighing whether to follow suit.

One influential group, Americans United for Life, released a statement blaming Trump directly for the vote.

“President Trump’s call for Republicans to be ‘flexible’ has set in motion a dangerous course that threatens to set the pro-life movement back a generation, undermining the genuine good achieved during his presidency,” said Sarah Zagorski Jones, the group’s senior director of communications.

In interviews, anti-abortion leaders stressed that the Hyde remarks were part of a long list of grievances with the Trump administration. That list includes the fall approval of a new generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone; what they view as slow-walking of an FDA review of the pills; the lack of action by the Justice Department to ban mail delivery of mifepristone; the promotion of fertility treatments many conservatives consider akin to abortion, and the fact that the president’s sweeping domestic policy bill defunded Planned Parenthood for just one year rather than permanently.

Activists are particularly incensed that the total number of abortions has gone up since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, despite more than a dozen states enacting near-total bans on the procedure.

“There's just a lot of ‘swing and a miss’ right now going on,” said Kristi Hamrick, the head of federal policy for Students for Life of America.

The group is one of several that has pledged to score against any vote for Obamacare subsidies without additional abortion restrictions and penalize Republicans who break ranks.

“We're making our list and checking it twice and we’re going to find out who's naughty or nice,” said Hamrick.

The White House official dismissed these concerns as “blown out of proportion or not put in proper context.”

For instance, the official argued the approval of generic mifepristone was a regulatory formality, that the FDA’s review of the pills is thorough and will take time, and that the White House is encouraging women to use whatever fertility treatments are best for them, not just IVF.

Aides also point to Trump’s pardons of activists convicted of breaking into or blocking abortion clinics, the expansion of the child tax credit, and the creation of so-called “Trump accounts” for children as examples of the administration’s “pro-family” focus.

“We’re not just looking at this now in the context of ‘abortion or no abortion’ but looking at it in the context of how to do everything it takes to accomplish the president’s baby boom,” the official said. “It takes systemic change to support American families.”

As they work to pressure the Trump administration and Congress, the activists argue that it’s more important for Republicans to fire up the conservative base for the midterms because turnout is lower than in a general election year. House elections can be won or lost by the narrowest of margins.

“If you demoralize a small percentage of pro-lifers, even if it is only 2 percent of the total electorate in swing districts, that is devastation,” said Frank Cannon, chief strategist for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.