Anti-abortion groups are preparing an aggressive plan for former President Donald Trump to implement on his first day in office, should he return to the White House next January.
Some of the policies that more than 100 anti-abortion groups hope will be implemented are the same policies that Trump had already approved in his first term but were rescinded by President Joe Biden. However, other policies are new and include efforts to overturn federal and state promotions of access to abortions.
“The conversations we’re having with the presidential candidates and their campaigns have been very clear: We expect them to act swiftly,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, told Politico. “Due to not having 60 votes in the Senate and not having a firm pro-life majority in the House, I think administrative action is where we’re going to see the most action after 2024 if President Trump or another pro-life president is elected.”
Trump, who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, has not vowed to sign a federal abortion ban, despite pressure from anti-abortion groups. Trump has also blamed anti-abortion groups and the anti-abortion movement for multiple electoral losses.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project is designed to roll back some Biden-era policies that have expanded abortion access, such as making abortions available at Veterans Affairs hospitals in some circumstances. Other groups are looking to revoke abortion access policies, such as the Pentagon’s funding for military members who must travel across state lines for an abortion and the expansion of HIPAA privacy rules to cover abortions.
Some activists also say they hope Trump will issue different guidelines and interpretations of existing laws, such as the 1873 Comstock Act. The act forbids the mail delivery of any “lewd or lascivious material,” including any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used for an abortion.
The Supreme Court and Congress have narrowed the scope of the Comstock Act, ruling that it cannot be used to stop mail delivery of contraception, but it could still be used to stop the mail orders of abortion pills, or medical instruments that are used in abortions.
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“We believe the Comstock Act should be followed and abortion pills should not be sent through the mail — certainly that should be enforced,” Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, said.
The Department of Justice said the act does not prevent the mail delivery of abortion medication unless the sender intended for it to be used illegally. But at least one Trump-appointed judge has ruled in favor of the act stopping the shipment of the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide.
