President Donald Trump has wasted no time in carrying out his anti-abortion agenda.
The president signed a pair of executive orders Friday reviving two anti-abortion policies from his first term - despite his pledges that abortion should be left to the state’s discretion.
To end his first week, Trump resurrected the enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions. Former President Biden had reversed the policy after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In his executive order, he said: “The previous administration disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of Federal programs.”
In a second order, Trump reinstated the so-called “global gag rule,” that prohibits U.S. taxpayer dollars from funding foreign organizations that provide abortions.
This move will be devastating to women and girls across the world, advocates warned.
During his first term, the implementation of the global gag rule harmed access to contraception, prompted patients to seek unsafe abortions and resulted in clinic closures around the world, according to the Guttmacher Institute. This policy also led to a surge in pregnancy-related deaths, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Speaking in a prerecorded video at the March for Life rally on Friday, Trump said he was “proud to be a participant” in the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade. He called the 1973 decision, which established the constitutional right to an abortion, a “historic wrong” that led to “50 years of division and anger.”
On Thursday, the president issued pardons for 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted of illegally blocking reproductive health clinics, violating a federal law. Lauren Handy made the cut.
Handy had been serving an almost five-year prison sentence for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 2020, when she and her associates used ropes and chains to block the entrance to a clinic in Washington, D.C.
One month after that case was brought against Handy and her co-defendants in 2022, authorities found five fetuses in a house in Southeast Washington where she was staying. The remains were allegedly taken from medical waste being disposed of by the Washington clinic. No charges were ever filed related to that incident.
Upon pardoning the nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists, Trump said: “They should not have been prosecuted.” He added: “Many of them are elderly people. … This is a great honor to sign this. They’ll be very happy.”
In response to the pardons, Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued a statement: “Yet again Donald Trump has pardoned convicted criminals — this time nearly two dozen individuals who have used violence to either harass, intimidate, or even prevent people from getting essential health care, including at Planned Parenthood health centers.
“Not even a week into his presidency, Donald Trump has disregarded the law and greenlit violence against abortion providers, all at the expense of people who wish to live in peace and safely exercise the right to control their own bodies and health.”
Trump made these drastic moves within the first five days of his second term. On the campaign trail, he often wavered in his messaging about reproductive rights. He avoided committing to a federal ban on abortions and consistently vowed to leave the issue up to the states.
The reproductive health landscape is still reeling from the impacts of his first presidency.
Trump has bragged about “killing” Roe after putting three justices on the bench who ruled in favor of overturning the landmark decision. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has upended health care across the country, with 41 states boasting some restrictions on abortions. Twelve of them prohibit the procedure entirely.
Some women have died due to the confusing abortion laws. Others have suffered irreversible health conditions. Others still are forced to overcome significant challenges, like travel and financial costs, to obtain critical health care.
Some states prohibit abortion at six weeks — before most women know they’re pregnant. Many women then have to travel out-of-state to receive care, adding to the burden of getting an already difficult procedure. States that have continued to provide care are slammed with patients, causing delays.
Separately, last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge revived a lawsuit challenging access to mifepristone, one drug in a two-drug regimen used in medication abortions. The widely-used drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration 25 years ago, but some critics have taken issue with some of the agency’s eased restrictions around the drug in recent years, including its ability to be prescribed by telehealth providers.
The case’s new plaintiffs — Missouri, Kansas and Idaho — argued that this rule violated a law that prohibits substances “intended for producing abortion” from being mailed.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California and expert on the history of abortion, warned about what Trump’s early presidency moves signal what’s to come.
She wrote in a post on X: “Hard to predict how far Trump will go in delivering for abortion opponents. We might get a sense from his decision to pardon protestors convicted under the federal FACE Act. Still, the real question is what happens to mifepristone and the Comstock Act.”
