It’s laborious to maintain observe of the harm President Donald Trump has accomplished in his first 100 days in workplace, from unlawfully deporting migrants and some U.S. residents and declaring a warfare on transgender kids to dismantling federal businesses and imposing tariffs that cratered the inventory market.
However one darkish concern has not but been realized: an aggressive push to successfully outlaw abortion nationwide. There was widespread concern in 2024 — based mostly on the positions of many individuals in Trump’s orbit — that his administration would possibly begin imposing the centuries-old Comstock Act or have the Meals and Drug Administration pull approval for abortion medicine. Whereas that hasn’t come to cross, the Trump administration has chipped away at alternative in much less seen methods and accomplished substantial harm to federal reproductive well being providers.
Not too way back, Trump was an unapologetic anti-abortion advocate who pandered usually to his evangelical far-right base. He overtly celebrated his position in repealing 50 years of federal abortion protections, telling Fox Information that “it’s a beautiful thing to watch” states ban abortion. However as soon as it turned clear that abortion bans are inherently unpopular, Trump shied away from his document: softening his rhetoric round reproductive rights, waffling on a nationwide abortion ban and peddling his lie that “everyone” wished Roe v. Wade repealed.
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Since successful the presidential election, Trump has continued this stance of purported moderation. However he nonetheless has an anti-abortion agenda — his administration has simply gotten higher at hiding it.
“The administration wants you to think that they are not paying attention to repro and that abortion is an issue left to the states … but that is completely untrue,” Ianthe Metzger, senior director of advocacy communications at Deliberate Parenthood Federation of America, advised HuffPost.
In his first week as president, Trump reinstated the “global gag rule,” a coverage that restricts abortion entry around the globe and hinders sexual and reproductive well being entry for a lot of rural communities in growing nations. He signed an government order to implement the Hyde Modification, a 50-year-old federal rule that bans using authorities funds for many abortions for individuals lined by Medicaid.
And people had been simply the coverage selections typically anticipated of a Republican administration. Others have been extra extraordinary — undermining a long time of political precedent and quietly concentrating on abortion in addition to primary reproductive well being care like contraception and sexually transmitted an infection prevention and testing.
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The administration is also working to “change the culture” round household and childbirth. However as a substitute of subsidizing baby care or mandating paid parental depart, the White Home is entertaining pro-natalist policy ideas, a number of of which had been as soon as used by the Nazis. One coverage concept floated to the White Home included awarding the “National Medal of Motherhood” to any girl who has six or extra kids. In Nazi Germany, ladies had been awarded a bronze medal for having four children, silver for six and gold for eight children.
Days into his presidency, Trump made an unprecedented transfer when he limited enforcement of the Freedom of Entry to Clinic Entrances Act — a federal regulation created to safeguard abortion clinics, sufferers and suppliers. He dismissed a handful of present ongoing investigations and pardoned 23 individuals for FACE convictions, successfully declaring open season on already weak abortion clinics, sufferers and employees. He additionally rejoined the Geneva Consensus, an excessive international anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQIA pact created during the first Trump administration that aligns the U.S. with socially conservative countries, some of which have been accused of rampant human rights violations.
Trump, together with billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, dismantled the Division of Health and Human Providers. These cuts have gutted critical expert teams that monitored in vitro fertilization, tracked nationwide maternal and toddler well being outcomes, in addition to printed key contraceptive pointers for physicians. The cuts additionally pulled funding from gender-based analysis, together with one study grant meant to protect pregnant women from domestic violence.
One Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team laid off in the larger DOGE cuts tracked maternal complications like gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, all of which can have lifelong health consequences for women and their children. The elimination of this team means losing the only source of data about the health and behavior of women before, during and shortly after pregnancy.
“Health will likely get worse, and you may not even know it. We won’t see the effects until it’s too late,” one former official within the CDC’s reproductive well being division told HuffPost earlier this month.
Some of the alarming strikes that may have vital penalties is Trump’s determination to cut $65.8 million in household planning grants underneath Title X, a federal program devoted to offering family-planning providers without spending a dime or discounted costs to about 4 million low-income People yearly. Title X has helped fund round 4,000 health clinics, supplying nearly 3 million low-income Americans in 2023 with reproductive health care including birth control, STI testing and cancer screenings. Despite GOP rhetoric, Title X funding cannot go toward abortions — meaning the Trump administration simply took away general health care for millions of Americans.
The information flew underneath the radar, doubtless as a result of many individuals don’t perceive what Title X is, and there was a substantial amount of chaos in Trump’s first 100 days. However the funding minimize has already considerably hindered operations at well being facilities throughout the nation, together with Deliberate Parenthood, a corporation that’s traditionally one of the largest Title X providers. At least six Planned Parenthood health centers have already shut down due to the Title X cuts the administration announced just last month.
“Abortion really was just the beginning,” said Metzger from Planned Parenthood. “An attack on Title X is an attack on birth control — that is what that program was funded for … None of these things are safe, they are all interconnected.”
Not too long ago, the Trump administration joined a Supreme Courtroom case alongside South Carolina, arguing that states needs to be allowed to exclude Deliberate Parenthood from their Medicaid packages, even for well being care providers outdoors of abortion care. Just like Title X funding cuts, this transfer would successfully defund Deliberate Parenthood, a long-held GOP aim. The Trump administration’s uncommon determination to hitch the case reveals simply how far they’re prepared to go to decimate abortion entry in addition to contraception, STI testing and different important reproductive well being care.
“President Trump has spent these first 100 days making it more dangerous to be pregnant in the United States.”
– Shannon Russell, Center for Reproductive Rights
One of many principal focuses of Trump’s first 100 days in workplace has been attacking LGBTQIA communities, particularly transgender children in ladies’s sports activities. And whereas some could not notice it, assaults on the trans group and assaults on reproductive justice are inherently linked. Trump’s anti-trans executive order contained “personhood” language, used often by extremist anti-abortion groups that believe life begins at conception and fetuses should have the same legal rights as born children. If fetal personhood ever became law, it would immediately create a total abortion ban and criminalize IVF, stem cell research and even some forms of birth control.
Trump has also lined his cabinet with abortion opponents, creating one of the most extreme anti-choice administrations in history.
Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Division of Justice to dismiss a high-profile federal lawsuit over the appropriate to emergency abortion care in Idaho — sending a transparent message that the administration would somewhat pregnant ladies proceed dying than provide secure abortion and miscarriage care. The federal regulation on the middle of the swimsuit, the Emergency Medical Remedy and Labor Act, requires hospitals that take part in Medicare (nearly all of hospitals within the nation) to supply abortion care if it’s essential to stabilize the well being of a pregnant affected person whereas they’re experiencing a medical emergency. The particular person in Trump’s administration in control of imposing that regulation is Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former TV character who’s overtly anti-abortion and believes abortion selections needs to be between “a woman, her doctors and her local political leaders.” Now that the lawsuit is dismissed, the Trump administration has the flexibility to rewrite federal EMTALA steering, which might observe the far-right Project 2025 playbook perfectly.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is liable for gutting a number of HHS businesses in addition to reducing Title X funding. Trump tasked him with studying the safety of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion, despite over two decades of safe and effective use by millions of Americans. Many of the HHS agencies Kennedy decimated were also the ones that would have studied mifepristone.
Kennedy himself may pull FDA approval of mifepristone, or FDA Commissioner Martin Makary may. The previous Fox Information contributor routinely unfold anti-abortion misinformation earlier than Trump made him head of the FDA. Throughout Makary’s affirmation listening to, he refused to answer questions on his plans for mifepristone.
Authorized challenges to reproductive freedom are certain to proceed because the abortion opposition has solely been emboldened since Trump took workplace. This implies there shall be extra Supreme Courtroom battles over abortion care — a daunting reality given the excessive court docket’s conservative majority and that John Sauer, well-known for his dogged opposition to abortion and birth control access, was recently confirmed as solicitor general, a position sometimes referred to as the “tenth justice.”
“President Trump has spent these first 100 days making it more dangerous to be pregnant in the United States, stacking every wing of his administration with anti-abortion extremists ready and willing to do his bidding,” Shannon Russell, federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told reporters in a Monday press call.
“Individually, these officials have great power,” Russell stated. “Together, they’ll do long-lasting damage to our democracy and threaten people’s reproductive freedoms.”
