Stance on abortion up to anti-abortion judges

One called abortion a “barbaric practice.” Another referred to himself as a “zealot” for the anti-abortion movement. As President Donald Trump pushes the Senate to confirm his federal judicial nominees, a review by The Associated Press shows that roughly half of them have revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.

Trump has offered shifting positions on the issue while indicating he wants to leave questions of abortion access to the states. But his court nominees will have lifetime appointments and be in a position to roll back abortion access long after the Republican president leaves the White House.

Bernadette Meyler, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford University, said judicial nominations “are a way of federally shaping the abortion question without going through Congress or making a big, explicit statement.”

“The Democrats’ extreme position on abortion was rejected in November in favour of President Trump’s commonsense approach, which allows states to decide, supports the sanctity of human life, and prevents taxpayer funding of abortion,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said.

Trump’s first term had an enduring impact on the courts, appointing 234 judges. By the end of that term, more than one-quarter of active federal judges were nominated by Trump, including three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Of the 17 judicial nominees so far in Trump’s second term, at least eight have argued in favour of abortion restrictions or against expanded abortion access. No such records could be found for the other nine, nor did the AP review find evidence that any of Trump’s judicial nominees support increased access to abortion.

— Whitney Hermandorfer, who has been confirmed to the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals, has built much of her relatively short career as a lawyer around challenging former President Joe Biden’s policies related to abortion and transgender rights. She defended Tennessee’s abortion ban, one of the strictest in the country and said abortion “is the only medical procedure that terminates a life.”

— Maria Lanahan, a district court nominee in Missouri, helped write the state’s complaint in a lawsuit that had sweeping national implications for access to medication abortion. The case challenged the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone despite decades of evidence showing the drug is safe and effective. The lawyer supported Missouri’s effort to strip Planned Parenthood of state Medicaid funding.

— Jordan Pratt, a nominee for the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, called abortion a “barbaric practice” and “one of the most severe invasions of personal rights imaginable.” In 2025, Pratt struck down a Florida law that created a judicial waiver program for minors seeking to have abortions without parental consent.

— John Guard, also nominated to fill for the same district, defended Florida’s then-15-week abortion ban in court as the state’s chief deputy attorney general.

— Joshua Divine, a deputy solicitor general of Missouri who is nominated to be a district judge in the state, is currently representing Missouri in a case challenging the FDA approval of mifepristone. Divine co-authored the lawsuit, which includes misinformation about medication abortion, including that it “starves the baby to death in the womb.” In his college newspaper, Divine described himself as a “zealot” for the anti-abortion movement.

— Chad Meredith, Trump’s nominee to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, defended the state’s abortion ban and other restrictions while he was the state’s chief deputy general counsel. That included a law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and describe images to abortion patients.

— Bill Mercer, a Republican state lawmaker in Montana who is nominated for a US District Court judgeship in the state, has repeatedly supported anti-abortion bills.

— Jennifer Mascott, a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office and a Trump nominee to the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, has said abortion issues are “more appropriately decided” by the states, elected officials in Congress and people in their local communities.

Abortion rights advocates said Trump is embedding abortion opponents into the judiciary one judge at a time. Mini Timmaraju, president of the national abortion rights organisation Reproductive Freedom for All, said, “This just feeds into this larger strategy where Trump has gotten away with distancing himself from abortion — saying he’s going to leave it to the states while simultaneously appointing anti-abortion extremists at all levels of government.”