EWTN News reports that FDA Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, elevated after Marty Makary’s May 12, 2026, resignation, has personally reached out to pro-life organizations—including March for Life and Live Action—to reassure them of his commitment to President Trump’s “pro-life and pro-family agenda.” This outreach comes amid concerns over Diamantas’ past legal work for a Planned Parenthood affiliate and frustration with the FDA’s failure to restrict the abortion drug mifepristone under Makary’s tenure. While pro-life leaders like Jennie Bradley Lichter express cautious optimism about potential regulatory action, others like Mark Harrington of Created Equal remain skeptical, demanding concrete action rather than mere words. The entire spectacle—of Catholic advocates pleading with secular bureaucrats for incremental restrictions on the slaughter of innocents—exposes the utter futility and spiritual catastrophe of seeking justice in a political order that has formally repudiated the Social Kingship of Christ.
The Idolatry of Secular Political Engagement
The article presents, without a shred of self-awareness, a scene that should fill every Catholic soul with horror and sorrow: baptized Catholics—leaders of organizations that claim to defend the faith—on their knees before a secular bureaucrat, begging him to slightly regulate the industrial machinery of infant slaughter. Jennie Bradley Lichter speaks with Diamantas about “the lack of safety, the lack of guardrails, [and] easy availability” of mifepristone, as though the fundamental problem with the abortion drug is one of insufficient governmental oversight rather than the intrinsic, diabolical evil of the act itself. This is the language of secular regulatory policy, not of Catholic moral theology. The Fifth Commandment—Non occides (Thou shalt not kill)—does not admit of “guardrails” or “safety studies.” It admits of absolute, unqualified obedience.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed with apostolic authority that “Christ’s reign encompasses all human nature” and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” He further declared that rulers and governments have the duty “to publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that the state must order “all relations in the state on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles, both in the issuing of laws and in the administration of justice.” The notion that Catholics should seek the gradual restriction of abortion through FDA regulatory mechanisms—rather than demanding the total, immediate, and unconditional legal prohibition of the practice as a matter of divine law—is a capitulation to the very secularism Pius XI condemned as “the plague that poisons human society.”
The article’s framing reveals the depth of this capitulation. The pro-life movement is portrayed as one “stakeholder” among many, engaging in “regular interaction” with “administration officials” to “inform FDA decision-making.” This is the language of lobbyists and interest groups, not of the Mystical Body of Christ. The Church does not “inform” secular bureaucrats; she teaches, governs, and commands in the name of her Divine Founder. As Pius XI wrote, the Church “demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The spectacle of Catholic leaders seeking reassurance from a man whose past legal work served Planned Parenthood—however attenuated—is not merely embarrassing; it is a symptom of the total loss of Catholic identity in the public square.
The Myth of the “Pro-Life” Bureaucrat
The article places extraordinary weight on the personal assurances of Kyle Diamantas, a man whose professional history includes legal representation of a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Andrew Nixon of the Department of Health and Human Services assures readers that Diamantas is “personally committed” to the pro-life agenda. Lichter, after a phone call, declares she feels “really comfortable” that Diamantas will be “a real champion at the FDA.” This is precisely the kind of credulity that the post-conciliar mentality encourages: placing trust in the personal intentions of secular officials rather than in the immutable demands of divine law and the authoritative teaching of the Church.
Mark Harrington of Created Equal offers a marginally more skeptical perspective, stating that “talk is cheap” and that “personnel is policy.” Yet even his skepticism operates within the same fundamentally flawed framework: the assumption that the correct personnel within the secular administrative state can deliver justice for the unborn. This is the heresy of Americanism condemned by Leo XIII—the belief that the peculiar character of the American political system is especially suited to the Church’s mission, and that engagement with secular institutions on their own terms can produce genuinely Catholic outcomes.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). This condemnation applies with equal force to Catholics who seek to reconcile the Church’s absolute teaching on the sanctity of life with the mechanisms of secular governance. The FDA is not a Catholic institution; it is an agency of a secular republic that has, in its jurisprudence and legislation, formally enshrined the right to abortion as a constitutional principle. To expect such an agency to deliver justice for the unborn is to expect a court of the synagogue of Satan to render judgment in favor of Christ.
The Abomination of Mifepristone and the Failure of Catholic Action
The article notes that under Makary, the FDA “launched a study to review the 2023 deregulation of mifepristone” but that “no action has been taken to increase restrictions.” In fact, the FDA approved a generic version of the drug during the same period. This is presented as a failure of political will, a disappointment to pro-life advocates who had hoped for different leadership. But from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the very concept of a “study” to determine whether a drug designed to kill unborn children should be “more restricted” is itself an abomination.
The Church’s teaching is not that abortion drugs should be “more regulated” or “less easily available.” The Church’s teaching is that abortion is a gravely evil act, a crime against God and humanity, and that those who procure or cooperate in an abortion incur latae sententiae excommunication (Canon 1398, 1983 Code—though the post-conciliar code itself is a product of the modernist revolution, the principle of excommunication for abortion is rooted in immemorial Church law). The Church does not seek to make abortion “safer” or “less accessible” through bureaucratic regulation; she seeks its total eradication through the conversion of souls and the establishment of Christ’s reign over civil society.
Pius IX, in Etsi Multa (1873), condemned those who claimed that the Pope had “fallen into heresy” by approving the Vatican Council, recognizing that defection from the faith can occur through public actions and teaching, not merely through formal adherence to a non-Catholic sect. By analogy, the defection of the pro-life movement from the full demands of Catholic teaching—its reduction of the fight against life to a matter of FDA regulatory policy—is a practical apostasy far more dangerous than any formal heresy, because it wears the mask of orthodoxy while hollowing out its substance.
The Silence About the Root: Apostasy Within the Church
What the article does not say—what it cannot say, because it operates within the mental prison of post-conciliar Catholicism—is that the very existence of a “pro-life movement” operating through secular political channels is a consequence of the apostasy of the conciliar church. Before the modernist revolution, the Church did not need to lobby the FDA. The Church taught, with the full weight of her magisterial authority, that abortion was a mortal sin and a crime, and Catholic civil governments enforced this teaching as a matter of public law. The fact that Catholics must now plead with secular bureaucrats for incremental restrictions on abortion is a direct consequence of the conciliar church’s abandonment of the Social Kingship of Christ and her embrace of the very secularism and religious indifferentism that the pre-conciliar magisterium condemned.
Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) of St. Pius X condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57) and that “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (Proposition 65). The post-conciliar pro-life movement, with its reduction of Catholic moral teaching to a matter of secular policy advocacy, is precisely the kind of “broad and liberal Protestantism” that St. Pius X foresaw and condemned. It has abandoned the supernatural order—the order of grace, conversion, and the Social Kingship of Christ—in favor of a purely naturalistic engagement with the political process.
The Only True Remedy: Christ the King
The only true remedy for the slaughter of the unborn is not a more favorable FDA commissioner, not a more restrictive regulatory framework, not a more effective lobbying strategy. The only true remedy is the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ over the United States and over all nations. This means, first and foremost, the conversion of the conciliar church itself—the repudiation of the modernist errors of Vatican II, the restoration of the traditional liturgy and sacraments, and the reassertion of the Church’s full authority over the faithful and over civil society.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” Until Christ is recognized as King of the United States—until the Constitution and laws of the nation are brought into conformity with the commandments of God—no FDA commissioner, no president, no Supreme Court decision will deliver lasting justice for the unborn. The “pro-life agenda” of the Trump administration, like all secular political agendas, is a palliative applied to a mortal wound. The wound will not be healed until the reign of Christ is restored, and that restoration begins not in Washington but in the confessional, the chapel, and the hearts of the faithful who refuse to compromise with the modernist revolution.
The article’s closing invitation—”I agree to receive communications from EWTN”—is a fitting symbol of the entire post-conciliar captivity: the faithful reduced to subscribers on a mailing list, waiting for news from a church that has lost its authority, seeking comfort from a world that is passing away. Regnare Christum volumus—We want Christ to reign. Not through the FDA. Not through the Republican Party. Not through any human agency. But through the restoration of His Church and the submission of all nations to His divine law.
Source:
FDA Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas promises pro-life agenda, calls advocates (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 13.05.2026