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How Trump Ripped Away Abortion Access by Ending Roe v. Wade — and How He’s Planning to Finish the Job
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Contents
When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he rode into office on a wave of support from anti-abortion extremists who expected him to execute their agenda faithfully. He exceeded their wildest dreams.
After only one term in office, Trump managed to stack the federal judiciary with hundreds of MAGA idealogues committed to restricting the reproductive rights of every American. His hand-picked Supreme Court Justices delivered the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, a popular 50-year precedent, launching the nation into a worsening abortion access crisis where more than 44% of U.S. women and many trans and nonbinary people are living under a Trump abortion ban¹. And Republicans are just getting started.
If he is elected this year, Donald Trump will empower extremist allies and appointees so they can finish the job of ending abortion access nationwide. Although his own campaign is making efforts to downplay his anti-abortion agenda, we can make no mistake: Donald Trump is to blame for our current abortion access crisis, and his reelection will mean fewer freedoms for all of us.
Read on to learn about:
Donald’s Damage to Reproductive Freedom During His First Term
The Crisis Donald Trump Created
What You Can Do to Defend Reproductive Freedom
Donald’s Damage to Reproductive Freedom During His First Term
Trump’s first term was chock full of targeted attacks on reproductive rights that harmed millions of women and families—and that was back when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land and constrained the government’s power to ban abortion. Now that his mission to destroy Roe has been fulfilled, we can expect a re-elected Trump to return to these efforts and open up new fronts in the MAGA war on reproductive freedom.
Here are just some of the ways that Trump attacked reproductive freedom in his first term:
Donald Trump radically remade the Supreme Court so it would reverse Roe v. Wade, and packed the federal courts with anti-abortion MAGA judges
He campaigned on the promise to overturn Roe and insisted that women who have abortions should face "some form of punishment.”
He installed three new Justices on the Supreme Court—chosen specifically because he guaranteed they would overturn Roe.
He spread anti-abortion ideology throughout our courts by nominating over 200 hand-picked MAGA judges during his administration.
Donald Trump repeatedly called for a nationwide abortion ban and other anti-abortion legislation to be made law while attacking healthcare access
He urged Congress to send him a bill that would have banned the vast majority of all abortions in the U.S. and supported other restrictions.
He led the charge to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and dismantle Medicaid; when those efforts failed, his administration moved to weaken the ACA’s contraceptive coverage benefit and access to family planning services under Medicaid.
He used his presidency to promote anti-abortion extremists and encourage states to ban abortion, while his Department of Justice argued in support of anti-abortion state laws in court—including at SCOTUS.
Donald Trump filled his administration with anti-science MAGA zealots who attacked reproductive rights at every opportunity while Roe was still in place
He made it the official position of the U.S. government to define life at the moment of fertilization - the same dangerous legal doctrine of fetal personhood that endangered IVF access in Alabama earlier this year - and vigorously spearheaded efforts to redefine international human rights law to exclude reproductive rights.
He tried to block Planned Parenthood and other reproductive healthcare providers who offer abortion services from participating in federal programs like Medicaid.
He sabotaged domestic family planning and sexual health programs.
He welcomed discrimination in healthcare by trying to expand religious and moral objections as a basis for refusing to provide reproductive care regardless of the harm to patients.
His administration surveilled the menstrual cycles of young immigrant detainees and denied them access to abortion until forced by court order to stand aside.
He tried to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to restrict access to abortion pills.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Donald Trump did all of this while Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. And many of these attacks would have gone even further if some courts had not held him back from violating Roe. Now that his Justices overturned Roe and are focused on ripping away more rights, there’s no more backstop.
Donald Trump in his own words
In 2016, in a recorded interview that aired as part of a MSNBC town hall, Trump said, “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who undergo abortions.
The Crisis Donald Trump Created
Because Donald Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe, 14 states have enacted total bans and four more have very early bans on abortion before most people even know they’re pregnant. In total, more than 44% of U.S. women and many trans and nonbinary individuals are living under abortion bans unleashed by ending Roe. And Republicans aren’t stopping there.
The Devastating impact of Trump’s abortion bans
More than 44% of U.S. women and many trans and nonbinary individuals now live in states where abortion has been banned because Trump’s Justices overturned Roe, including more than half of Black women and 67% of women with low incomes.
One in five abortion patients had to travel across state lines to access abortion care in 2023, increasing costs and wait times as clinics struggle to keep up with the influx of patients. Republican lawmakers in some states have threatened prosecutions despite constitutional protections for interstate travel and free speech and association.
Republican lawmakers are fighting in court to enforce abortion bans even in emergency situations where doing so violates federal patient protections requiring hospitals to provide emergency treatment to prevent serious harm to the patient’s health.
MAGA Republicans are fighting to end access to abortion pills, which account for 63% of all abortions in the U.S.
As devastating as that all is, they’re not done…
The Republican Post-Roe Blueprint to ban abortion nationwide
Overturning Roe was never the end goal, and MAGA Republicans are continuing their crusade to crush reproductive freedom nationwide. But they know how incredibly unpopular their agenda is with voters, so they’re advancing their extreme agenda by:
Lying to voters about the crisis Trump created under the guise of “states’ rights.”
Even as their presidential candidate tries to downplay their agenda and delude himself that “people are absolutely thrilled” he killed Roe, MAGA is pursuing the most extreme abortion bans and restrictions state by state and in the courts to eliminate access across huge swaths of the United States. “Return it to the states” is simply a lie told by the Trump campaign to pave the way for more Trump abortion bans and experiment with attacks to take nationwide, like both Trump and JD Vance wanting to allow states to conduct surveillance on pregnant people.
Keeping quiet about the most extreme parts of their agenda while laying the groundwork to implement it on Day 1 of a Trump-Vance Administration.
MAGA extremists have explicitly urged Trump to “keep his mouth shut” so that voters won’t hear about Project 2025, the 900-page MAGA playbook for remaking the federal government into a tool for their agenda of white Christian nationalism and political revenge. One of the proposals buried in those 900 pages is a plan to ban abortion and push other restrictions nationwide with or without Congress via the Comstock Act - more on that below.
Ramming through federal budget restrictions and tanking Democrats’ efforts to codify reproductive freedom while MAGA plots the opposite - a total end to abortion, IVF, and contraceptive access nationwide.
Republicans continue to ruthlessly push new appropriations riders to undermine access to reproductive care while repeatedly blocking Dem bills to codify abortion rights, the right to contraception, the right to IVF services, the right to travel across state lines for abortion care, and more. And they’ve continued to build support for the same radical legal concept of fetal personhood that jeopardized IVF services in Alabama earlier this year; 86% of currently serving House Republicans have signed their name to such legislation, which would not only ban all abortion with no exceptions but would also end IVF as we know it.
repro reality check
what is the comstock act and Why You Should be worried about it
Project 2025 calls for enforcing the Comstock Act, an archaic anti-obscenity law first passed by Congress in 1873 that MAGA extremists want to misuse as a total abortion ban nationwide with no exceptions. The Comstock Act criminalized mailing any information or item for “any indecent or immoral purpose”, including for abortion. Because of numerous court challenges to its constitutionality and because the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protected abortion access, the idea of using the Comstock Act to ban abortion was no more than a fringe theory among anti-abortion extremists until Donald Trump got rid of Roe and his judges began ruling in favor of MAGA interpretations of Comstock.
Project 2025 is crystal clear in its tactical silence—they've advised Trump to avoid mentioning Comstock, betting on public ignorance about its implications. Their advice to him is cynical yet straightforward: Denounce a federal ban, stay quiet, and ride the wave of misinformation back into the White House. And Donald is doing just that.
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