It’s an arresting quote that captures growing frustration with the second Trump administration on issues ranging from the appointment of a longtime supporter of legal abortion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to serve as secretary of health and human services, to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary’s failure to push safety concerns with mifepristone.

But the rift dates back to before “the most pro-life president in history” returned to the White House, as Trump seemed fazed by the political consequences of Roe’s reversal. Trump criticized an abortion ban signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) ahead of the 2024 primaries and ultimately weakened the long-standing pro-life plank in the Republican platform after capturing the party’s presidential nomination for the third consecutive time. 

A decade ago, pro-life activists had enough influence and leverage over the party to turn Trump against abortion. (He had briefly campaigned against Pat Buchanan for the 2000 Reform Party presidential nomination as a “very pro-choice” candidate, though he expressed some moral qualms about abortion.) In 2016, Trump vowed to support the pro-life policies of past Republican administrations and to choose Supreme Court justices from a list of specific conservatives.

Abortion opponents and other social conservatives had helped sink former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination after months in which he sat atop the national polls. They later dissuaded the eventual GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain, from picking Democratic abortion-rights supporter Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

Trump kept most of his 2016 campaign promises to social conservatives. He delivered the pro-life movement’s biggest victory when all three of the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a landmark decision that will mark its fourth anniversary next month.

When Roe was last at risk of reversal 30 years earlier, several justices nominated by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush voted with the liberal bloc to save its core holding that there was a constitutional right to abortion in most cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wanted to uphold the Mississippi abortion ban at the center of Dobbs without abandoning Roe entirely.

Justice Samuel Alito, a W. Bush nominee, wrote the Dobbs majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas, an H.W. Bush nominee, joined Alito and the three Trump-appointed justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — in reversing Roe.

It was a seismic event. A draft of Alito’s opinion was leaked before the decision was handed down, an unprecedented move apparently intended to pressure conservative justices to capitulate. Some of those justices were stalked by would-be assassins or faced protests outside their homes. 

Roe featured prominently in the confirmation hearings of every Republican Supreme Court nominee from Robert Bork, whom the Senate rejected in 1987, to Barrett in 2020, who, in the waning months of Trump’s first term, did not receive a single Democratic vote.

Democrats hoped to capitalize on the threat of federal or state-level abortion bans to save their endangered congressional majorities. Then-President Joe Biden urged the party faithful to turn out in defense of abortion in “Roe-vember.”

When Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections, only narrowly taking the House and actually losing a seat in the Senate, Trump was among those blaming Dobbs for the absence of a red wave. While still taking credit for the end of Roe, he said the decision hurt pro-life turnout while motivating supporters of legal abortion.

Trump had self-interested reasons for taking this position. The alternative explanation was that he was the reason Republicans underperformed in the midterm elections. DeSantis, the big GOP winner of 2002 and a likely Trump primary opponent in 2024, was potentially vulnerable on abortion. 

But this began a pattern of careful Trump triangulation on abortion in his third presidential campaign. “I have to tell you from a conservative and Republican standpoint, you have to learn how to talk about pro-life, you have to learn how to talk about that decision,” Trump said in 2023. “Because you don’t know how to talk about it.”

This meticulous positioning worked in 2024. According to exit polls, Trump won 92% of voters who thought abortion should be illegal in most cases and 88% who believed it should be illegal in all cases. But he and former Vice President Kamala Harris split voters who thought abortion should be legal in most cases at 49% apiece. He barely lost to Harris on the question of who voters trusted more to handle abortion, 49% to 46%.

Now, pro-life activists are questioning whether they got enough out of the bargain the second time around. The political consequences are likely to be felt by Republicans other than Trump. Congressional candidates will face more scrutiny on abortion in the midterm elections. Vice President JD Vance will be pressured to break with Trump on mifepristone if he runs in 2028, and to account for whether he exerted the same pro-life influence as former Vice President Mike Pence did during the president’s first term.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TARGETS BIRTH CONTROL TO APPEASE MAHA ALLIES 

But these same activists will also have to take into consideration whether Trump and Vance have read the electorate accurately on abortion, and if so, figure out how to make the political conditions more favorable.

Pro-life leaders had wanted to remain on friendly terms with Trump to maintain a place at the table. Now, some are saying the president is the problem.