Abortion rights, women of color, and LGBTQIA+ people are under attack. Pledge to join us in fighting for gender justice.
In his first week in office, President Trump betrayed his campaign promises on reproductive health care, taking direct aim at access to abortion and birth control. He issued two executive orders and took other actions that roll back efforts to protect and advance access to abortion and birth control, and that threaten health care providers across the country.
Trump repealed two Biden-era executive orders that sought to protect and expand access to reproductive health care in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s wrongful decision overturning people’s constitutional right to abortion.
President Trump issued a new executive order to rescind the executive orders issued by President Biden in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s unjust decision taking away the constitutional right to abortion. President Biden’s orders had sought to protect access to abortion and contraception amid the unfolding reproductive health care crisis.
Those now-repealed orders established new initiatives and directed agencies to take a range of actions aimed at protecting patients and providers in the wake of losing the constitutional right to abortion. Trump’s order ended those efforts.
Specifically, the Trump executive order:
- Dismantles the Interagency Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access, which had been established to ensure a whole-of-government response to the crisis;
- Stops federal agency efforts, specifically by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and Federal Trade Commission, to protect patient and provider privacy and security;
- Halts agency efforts to enforce anti-discrimination law in response to reports of people being denied emergency abortion care and prescription medication;
- Stops federal agency efforts to ensure individuals receive emergency abortion care as guaranteed by law;
- Ceases efforts to advance abortion access for patients enrolled in Medicaid who must travel for abortion care;
- Stops public education and awareness efforts about access to reproductive health care, including informing people about how to obtain birth control; and
- Blocks data collection, research, and analysis in measuring the effect of access to reproductive health care on maternal health outcomes and other health outcomes.
The Biden orders led to a range of guidance, regulations, and policies that have helped address the crisis facing the country in the wake of the Supreme Court’s unjust decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Those Biden orders led, for example, to guidance reminding hospitals of their obligations to provide emergency abortion care under federal law and to an updated rule to bolster patient privacy with respect to reproductive health care data.
Trump’s action rescinding the Biden executive orders does not directly or immediately reverse these policies and guidance. But Trump’s executive order is a signal that the new administration will not enforce them and will likely soon target them for rescission or reversal. Trump’s order is also a directive to federal agencies that they should be implementing new anti-reproductive health policies.
It is worth noting that Trump titled the executive order “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment.” The Hyde Amendment is one of the most harmful restrictions on abortion care passed over the last few decades. It denies abortion coverage to individuals enrolled in the federal Medicaid program and has been expanded to other programs as well, denying abortion coverage to a range of individuals who rely on federal programs, including military servicemembers, veterans, and federal employees. Not only does this Trump executive order misapply and misuse the Hyde Amendment, but it also exploits biases and unfounded assumptions about public funding for abortion care. This is a cynical ploy that is meant to hide Trump’s action to block a range of initiatives to expand reproductive health care. And it demonstrates that Trump intends to use his power to further entrench the harmful coverage bans that have for decades created often insurmountable barriers to abortion for many women across the country, disproportionately impacting people with low incomes, people of color, young people, immigrants, and people who live in rural communities.
The Trump administration rescinded critical travel and leave benefits for service members and their families seeking abortion care.
Unfortunately, the harmful policies flowing from Trump’s executive order began shortly after it was issued. The Department of Defense, under newly-appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, cited the Trump executive order when rescinding a key policy that provides for travel allowances and leave for service members and dependents who are forced to travel off-base for abortion care they are denied in the military.1 The Department cited the Trump executive order, misapplying the Hyde Amendment and using Trump’s executive order to justify stripping these critical benefits away from service members. Rather than informing military families of this change, the Department did not issue any public notice.
Many military installations exist in – or border – states with abortion bans. For decades, service members had to travel off base for reproductive health care. But now, given that states across the country have banned abortion, many service members now have to travel much farther to access the care they need. The rescission of this key policy further denies service members their reproductive freedom.
Trump undermined global health initiatives by reinstating what’s known as the Global Gag Rule, which prohibits the U.S. from supporting foreign organizations that advocate or provide information, referrals, or services for abortions, even in countries where it’s legal.
Trump issued an executive order reinstating the Global Gag Rule, a harmful policy that prohibits international non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. government funding from using their own money to provide information, referrals, or services for legal abortion or to advocate for access to abortion in their own country.
This policy harms the health of individuals in the poorest countries and leaves them without the information and care they need. It censors organizations who are trying to provide that information and care. And it renders the U.S.’s international family planning program ineffective.
Extensive research has documented how the Global Gag Rule has forced health providers to reduce staff and services and even shut their doors; how thousands of women lose their ability to get care from trusted providers; and how it makes abortion unsafe and more necessary.
Trump doubled down on efforts to protect anti-abortion extremists’ dangerous behavior, threatening the safety of reproductive health care providers and patients.
Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion extremists who were prosecuted and convicted under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a critical civil rights law that makes it a federal crime to use force, the threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with someone who provides or is obtaining reproductive health care services.
The extremists that Trump pardoned were found guilty of entering clinics by force, barricading clinic entrances with chains and bike locks, harassing patients and providers, and even assaulting and injuring clinic staff.
Shortly after the pardons were announced, Trump’s Department of Justice announced that it would no longer enforce the FACE Act at all, except in “extraordinary cases” that present “significant aggravating factors.”
These actions by the new administration will embolden anti-abortion extremists who seek to intimidate, harass, threaten, and engage in violence against abortion providers, patients, and volunteers.
The Trump administration scrubbed agency websites of vital information about reproductive health care.
Within hours of taking office, the Trump administration took the website www.reproductiverights.gov offline entirely. The site was created in 2022 as part of the Biden administration’s response to the Supreme Court’s unjust decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The site contained information on access to abortion and other reproductive health care, including where patients can find care and whether their insurance will cover it.
The administration also appears to have scrubbed other agency websites of references to abortion. Guidelines regarding contraception and 20 years of H.I.V. data that doctors use to determine whether a pregnant person should be tested for the virus were pulled from the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though some of this information has been restored, much of it remains unavailable.
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Trump’s actions are purposeful, and aimed at targeting reproductive health care and those who need and provide it. These actions are exacerbating a climate of confusion, fear, and lack of safety among those who provide or seek abortion or other reproductive health care that will further deepen the public health crisis that has swept this country since Roe v. Wade was overturned. And they are undoubtedly only the first of many more to come from this hostile, authoritarian administration.
1 Federal law prohibits the Department from providing abortion services at military treatment facilities, and from covering an abortion under TRICARE, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the pregnant person’s life.
Find the official document here.