How President Trump’s victory will change abortion rights in the US

Voters in seven of 10 states approved ballot measures this week to protect abortion rights, a hot-button issue that has helped drive Americans to the polls.

But President-elect Donald Trump’s victory early Wednesday could make access to this procedure more vulnerable and uncertain across the United States, potentially putting the reproductive well-being of many women at risk. Health policy experts have warned that there is.

President Trump has been very vague about his position on abortion, recently saying he does not support a federal ban and would rather leave the issue to the states. But President Trump and his federal appointees could further restrict abortion at the federal level in ways that don’t require Congress to pass new legislation.

“The more restrictions we put on abortion over the next four years, the worse the health impacts will be,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center. We will be welcoming you,” he said.

Access to abortion in the United States has already been in a state of flux in the two years since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to abortion procedures. He credits this decision to President Trump, who has since reformed the courts. As of last year, more than 25 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 lived in states with more restrictive access to abortion than before the 2022 court ruling, PBS reported.

Experts say the Trump administration’s further crackdown on abortion could endanger the health of many patients, especially low-income people and people of color.

“Unless the government is fully committed to providing access to abortion for everyone who seeks it, there will be confusion and confusion on the ground over what is legal and what is available,” O’Connor said. said. “It will contribute to the ongoing health care access crisis that we are seeing with regards to abortion.”

It is unclear what President Trump’s actions will be on this issue. There is little public support for Congress to pass a nationwide abortion ban, according to a June poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. At least 70% of Americans oppose a federal ban on abortion or a ban on six-week abortions.

Experts say if President Trump decides to restrict access, it could include limiting the availability of medication abortions, especially for telemedicine or mail-in abortions.

A study conducted in March by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access, found that medication is the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the United States, surpassing all cases performed in the United States last year. This accounted for 63% of abortions.

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that Trump has “long and consistently supported states’ right to decide on abortion.”

Julie F. Kaye, co-founder and executive director of the Telemedicine Abortion Coalition, said the Trump administration is seeking to significantly restrict or significantly limit medication abortions by enforcing an interpretation of the long-expired Comstock Act. There is a possibility that it may be banned.

Passed in 1873, this law makes it a federal crime to send or receive drugs or other items designed for abortion through the mail. It was not widely enforced for decades.

Kelly Dittmar, the institute’s director of research, said the Trump administration is using the law to restrict the shipment and distribution of abortion pills and medical devices that could be used in abortion procedures, such as dilators and suction catheters. It could prevent doctors from performing abortions in hospitals. Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.

To take effect, President Trump would need to appoint an anti-abortion U.S. attorney general, which would require Senate confirmation.

The Biden administration has argued that the Comstock Act provisions are outdated. President Trump said in August that he had no plans to implement the Comstock Act.

But abortion opponents and Trump allies, including vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, argue otherwise. Some of President Trump’s former advisers have also written into Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint, that supports the use of the Comstock Act to restrict abortion drugs. So are the country’s major anti-abortion groups.

O’Connor noted that any effort to enforce it would likely face legal opposition.

The issue could end up before the Supreme Court, whose justices have expressed openness to the idea that the Comstock Act could ban abortion. Earlier this year, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas repeatedly invoked the Comstock Act during oral arguments in medical abortion cases.

President Trump also could appoint anti-abortion leaders to control key federal agencies that can exercise executive power to significantly restrict or ban procedures in the United States, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Justice. be.

Kelly Burden, associate director for policy at the Guttmacher Institute, noted the Dobbs v. Supreme Court decision and said, “These institutions are committed to providing as much clarity and protection as possible regarding abortion rights in a post-Dobbs world.” I have worked hard,” he said. Jackson Women’s Medical Institution, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

President Trump and his political appointees at the FDA will severely restrict or in some cases eliminate access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in common medication abortion programs. FDA may be instructed to do so.

Anti-abortion doctors faced off against the FDA in 2023 in a legal battle over its more than 20-year approval of the drug. In June, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to mifepristone, siding with the Biden administration. This means commonly used drugs remain widely available.

However, the FDA, appointed by President Trump, could seek to reverse certain changes made from 2016 to 2021 that expanded access to mifepristone. This could include reinstating the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person, which would effectively eliminate access to the pill via telemedicine.

A research project published in May by the Family Planning Association found that telemedicine is becoming an increasingly popular means of accessing abortion claims, with telemedicine accounting for 50% of abortion claims in the last few months of 2023. It is said that this accounted for nearly 1 case per year.

Restricting telemedicine as an option would have an “incredibly chilling effect” on access to abortion, said Alina Alina, senior vice president and director of women’s health policy at KFF, a health policy research institute. Salganikov said.

“In states where abortion is banned, more people have to travel, more people are delayed in getting care, and more people are actually denied care because they can’t get an abortion.” “It’s possible,” she said.

New FDA leaders may also try a more extreme approach, revoking mifepristone’s approval entirely. Both strategies would ignore important scientific research demonstrating the safe and effective use of mifepristone in the United States, experts said.

President Trump vaguely hinted in August that he would not rule out directing the FDA to revoke access to mifepristone. Just a few days later, Vance attempted to retract his statement.

President Trump’s comments appear to be a shift from his position in June, when the former president said during a CNN debate that he would “not block” access to mifepristone.

At the very least, President Trump could reinstate some of the policies he implemented during his first term that made abortion difficult to obtain and water down some of the efforts the Biden administration has made to expand access. .

President Trump may reinstate the so-called domestic gag rule, which was enacted in 2019 and repealed by the Biden administration in 2021.

The rule prohibited health care providers participating in the federally funded Title X Family Program from referring patients to abortion care or providing counseling that included abortion information. Title X is a decades-old program that provides family planning and preventive health services to patients, especially those with low incomes.

Guttmacher’s Baden said the rule “decimated” the network of Title X family planning clinics and limited their ability to serve low-income patients. These clinics are “still recovering,” she said.

“There’s no reason to think he won’t reinstate that rule in his first 100 days,” Baden said.

The Trump administration could also quickly reverse some of Biden’s executive orders, memorandums and other efforts aimed at protecting and expanding access to reproductive health services, Baden said.