Then-President Donald Trump addresses the 47th annual “March for Life” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2020. He was the first president to address in person the country’s biggest annual gathering of anti-abortion campaigners.
Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
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Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
During his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump delivered on many goals of the anti-abortion-rights movement: appointing conservative Supreme Court justices and restricting federal funding for groups like Planned Parenthood, among other things.
Now, those activists hope a second Trump term will be a chance to take their agenda further.
“All of that is good, what we saw in the first Trump administration. But we can do better,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.
Her organization recently unveiled a plan called “Make America Pro-Life Again.”
A tug-of-war over federal dollars
Hawkins was among anti-abortion activists who criticized some of Trump’s statements during the campaign, such as the idea that abortion policy should be left up to the states. Many anti-abortion rights activists, including Hawkins, would like federal restrictions on abortion.
But she still sees an opening.
“We are taking President Trump at his word, and we can work with what he said and his promises he made to the American people on the campaign trail,” Hawkins said. “But if he’s serious about ending the federal role in abortion policy, then we need to cut federal taxpayer money.”
Federal funding for abortion is already prohibited in most cases under a longstanding policy known as the Hyde Amendment, but aid for family planning at home and abroad has been a continued source of debate.
In a statement, Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said Trump has a history of making it “more difficult for people to access essential reproductive health care” through cuts to federal family planning programs.
Abortion rights opponents want to go back to Trump-era policies that limited funding for groups like Planned Parenthood, who refer patients for abortion. They also want to overturn Biden administration policies designed to facilitate abortion access for military service members and veterans.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, calls those goals more realistic than another objective of many anti-abortion groups — a national abortion ban.
“What I want is gonna be different than what’s gonna happen — obviously I want to protect all unborn children because they’re members of the human family,” Tobias said.
Congress and the courts
Ahead of the election, Trump said he would not sign a federal abortion ban if it came to his desk, and Republicans won’t have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
Plus, Tobias says it’s unclear where a national ban would draw the line — at conception, or some later gestational age.
“Is it at 12 weeks, 15 weeks, 20 weeks?” she says. “There’s a lot of, I don’t want to say disagreement, but there’s no consensus within the pro-life community.”
Abortion opponents will also be looking to the Trump administration for regulations designed to limit access to mifepristone, known as the abortion pill.
Erik Baptist is senior counsel and director of the Center for Life at Alliance Defending Freedom, which helped lead an effort to challenge the FDA’s approval of the medication. He wants the incoming Trump administration to revisit rules established under Presidents Obama and Biden that have made it easier for patients to access the abortion pill.
“So if the Trump administration goes back and looks at how the FDA justifies its recent decisions, it will go back and potentially revisit and repeal those actions,” Baptist predicted.
Some anti-abortion activists have also pushed for restricting abortion by reviving a 19th-century anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act. It criminalizes sending abortion-related materials through the mail, which could include abortion pills.
A climate of uncertainty
Given Trump’s mixed messaging on the issue in recent years, abortion rights advocates say it’s hard to predict what his administration will do first.
Jennifer Driver, senior director of reproductive rights with the State Innovation Exchange, says she’s worried about the many uncertainties for abortion policy in an environment where Republicans will control Congress and conservatives have a Supreme Court majority.
“Trump politically has nothing to lose by signing a national abortion ban,” Driver said. “There are very little checks and balances…So the unknown in this moment seems really concerning.”
Abortion rights groups say with Trump set to take office in two months, they’re gearing up for another round of fights over abortion rights at the state and federal level, in legislatures and the courts.
Like the potential fight over access to abortion pills. Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, says an action like cutting off that access nationwide would be significantly out of step with public opinion.
“We’ll have to see whether President Trump wants to fight that battle. We know one thing for certain, that President Trump doesn’t like to be unpopular, and that would be an incredibly unpopular decision,” Dalven said.
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