Anti-abortion advocates say there's still work to be done to further restrict access to abortion when Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House next year. They point to the federal guidance that the administration of Democratic President Biden released around emergency abortions, requiring that hospitals provide them for women whose health or life is at risk, and its easing of prescribing restrictions for abortion pills that have allowed women to order the medication online with the click of a button. "Now the work begins to dismantle the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration," Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the powerful anti-abortion lobby, said in a statement Wednesday, per the AP. "President Trump's first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term." The group declined to release details about what, specifically, they'll seek to undo.
But abortion rights advocates are bracing for further abortion restrictions once Trump takes office. And some women are, too, with online abortion pill orders spiking in the days after Election Day. Trump has said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government. Yet during the campaign, he pointedly noted that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion. And there are things his administration can do, from picking judges to issuing regulations, to further an anti-abortion agenda. The Trump administration is expected to pull back Biden's directive that requires emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to stabilize a woman's health or life.
Reports of women being sent home or left untreated by hospitals in dangerous scenarios have proliferated across the United States since the Supreme Court overturned the national right to an abortion in 2022. In some cases, hospitals said state abortion bans had stopped them from terminating a pregnancy. "We're seeing the lives of pregnant people be put in jeopardy," Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, said Wednesday. "We're seeing women who have become infertile, who have been subject to sepsis, and we're now hearing reports with death." Trump has said he supports exceptions for rape and incest cases, as well as when a woman's life is at risk. But he has not gone as far as saying he supports exemptions when a woman's health is on the line.
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Abortions may be necessary to prevent organ loss, significant hemorrhage, or dangerous infections for pregnant women in rare but serious scenarios. In cases like ectopic pregnancy and placental abruptions, a fetus might still be alive but continuing the pregnancy can be detrimental. Doctors have argued that the legal gray area has put them in a bind. Still, Trump could be a wild card on the issue, said UC Davis law professor Mary Ziegler. In the final months of the campaign, he backed away from a more rigid stance on abortion, even saying he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban if it came across his desk. Although he has enjoyed firm backing from anti-abortion groups, he's willing to break with allies when he wants. "I don't think we have a clear sense from him about what he would do," Ziegler said. More here.
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