Trump and MAGA Republicans Continue To Attack Reproductive Health Care Access As 22nd State Abortion Ban Takes Effect
This week, Iowa became the 22nd state with an active abortion ban. Ever since the MAGA Trump-appointed Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended nearly half a century of constitutionally protected abortion rights, attacks on reproductive health care from MAGA Republicans have skyrocketed, imperiling access to care for millions of Americans across the country. Donald Trump himself says that he is the one responsible for “killing Roe v. Wade.” He is responsible for the devastating consequences for women’s health and would push an extreme agenda taking away access to contraception and even in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Just like Trump, Republicans have done nothing but push to limit access to essential reproductive care and they are pushing just as hard to limit access to contraception and IVF, pass a national abortion ban, undermine the Affordable Care Act, and gut Medicaid. Here are five ways Trump and MAGA Republicans are threatening reproductive care:
- Abortion Access Remains Under Threat. Two years ago, Donald Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the consequences for women’s health have been catastrophic, with cruel and archaic abortion bans spreading across the country. Since then, abortion extremists backed by Trump’s MAGA allies went to court to take the abortion medication mifepristone off the market entirely. At least 67 Republican members of Congress and 22 Republican attorneys general supported the push to ban mifepristone. Even though the MAGA SCOTUS just rejected their challenge, the case will return to the MAGA-packed Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for further review. Republicans will not be deterred by the SCOTUS ruling, which rejected the challenge only on standing, paving the way for a future challenge to succeed on the merits of the case. If MAGA Republicans get their way there will be even more extreme judicial appointments and an all-out push to use the Comstock Act to create a de facto national ban on abortions and sharply limit access to medications.
- State-Level MAGA Republicans Are Working To Punish Out-of-State Abortions. MAGA Republicans in states with draconian abortion bans have been finding ways to punish people seeking abortions out-of-state. Idaho passed a so-called “abortion trafficking” ban that was temporarily placed on hold by courts, and Alabama’s MAGA attorney general is attempting to use existing law to prosecute those who help others obtain abortions out-of-state. Texas Republicans are pushing for public lists of anyone pursuing an abortion as well as any family members who assisted or facilitated the effort.
- Republicans and Red State Judges Are Threatening Fertility Treatments Like IVF Through Extreme, Anti-Choice Policies. Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children, putting the future of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in jeopardy. Republicans have made it clear that they have no intention to protect reproductive health care in the post-Roe landscape, and Republicans in other states like Idaho are joining in, pushing anti-choice policies that create extreme uncertainty for reproductive health care access. Senate Republicans have moved to block legislation to protect IVF and other fertility treatments multiple times, with all but two Senate Republicans voting against codifying federal protections just last week.
- MAGA Republicans Are Targeting The Affordable Care Act, Which Provides Free Contraception. The Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage requirement has drastically improved health care access and affordability for tens of millions of Americans. The benefits have reached far and wide — improving health outcomes and sharply cutting out-of-pocket costs. Despite the overwhelming success of the ACA’s contraception coverage, Republicans have attempted to eliminate this essential care year after year through legislation and litigation. Republicans have spent years taking dozens of failed votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They have also taken their fight to overturn the ACA to the Supreme Court and failed all three times. During his first term, Donald Trump notoriously tried and failed multiple times to repeal the ACA and throughout his 2024 campaign Trump has repeatedly reignited his calls to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, which he claims is a “disaster.”Earlier this summer, the MAGA-dominated Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals also heard a challenge to a provision of the ACA that requires insurers to cover lifesaving preventive services for free. They ruled that the employers who brought the case do not have to cover these preventive services through their health plans, and sent back to the right-wing district court the questions of whether employers must continue to cover preventive services recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The decision leaves free preventive services at risk as the case proceeds through the legal system and opens the door to further litigation. By taking these actions, Republicans are fighting to strip protections that provide access to reproductive care.
- The ACA Made Access To Birth Control Free For Over 60 Million Americans. The ACA guarantees that private health plans cover 18 methods of contraception and make them available to 58 million patients with no out-of-pocket costs. More than 99 percent of sexually active women have used contraceptives at some point in their lifetimes, and approximately 60 percent of women of reproductive age currently use at least one birth control method. In addition to increasing access to this essential treatment, this ACA provision has saved money for women and their families: women saved $1.4 billion on birth control pills alone in 2013.
- The Trump Administration Already Made It Harder To Access Reproductive Health Care. The Trump administration took multiple steps to make it harder to access reproductive health care, including by allowing insurance providers to “opt out” of ACA-mandated coverage for contraception and barring federal funding for abortions. As President, Trump allowed more employers to opt out of birth control coverage in their workers’ health insurance. In August 2019, the Trump administration also began enforcing a rule that barred certain federally-funded clinics from referring women for abortions; as a result, the nation’s largest recipient of Title X funds, Planned Parenthood, was forced to exit the program, losing $60 million in funding previously used to provide birth control and reproductive health care services for low-income women.
- Project 2025 Maps Out Broad Exemptions To ACA-Mandated Free Contraception. Project 2025 pushes for a set of “exemptions” to certain preventive care mandates for ACA-compliant coverage – including no-cost contraceptive coverage. This policy would reinstitute broad Trump-era exemptions that could increase every woman’s out-of-pocket costs for contraception by more than $584 annually while also allowing non-profit and for-profit employers to restrict their health coverage without notice.
- Trump And His Closest Allies Are Pushing To Restrict Access To Contraception. Trump and his MAGA allies are developing a blueprint for a second Trump administration to restrict birth control through a series of executive actions, and Trump recently said he was “looking at” imposing new policy restrictions on contraception. Project 2025 includes numerous proposals that would require coverage of so-called “natural planning” contraceptive strategies and remove requirements that insurance cover certain forms of emergency contraception.
- Republicans Are Waging a War on Medicaid, Which Covers Reproductive Health Care For Millions of Americans. Medicaid, which covers tens of millions of Americans, is an essential source of reproductive health care. Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump are itching for a renewed war on Medicaid. The latest proposals from the Republican Study Committee and the Trump team in-waiting at the Heritage Foundation, who authored Project 2025, would throw millions of people off their coverage through block granting and burdensome work reporting requirements. Almost two-thirds, or 62 percent, of those who would lose their Medicaid coverage as a result of work requirements, are women and disproportionately women of color.
- Project 2025 Lays Out MAGA Plans To Tie Medicaid Funding to State Abortion Bans. Project 2025 would tie federal Medicaid funding to the adoption of new requirements for abortion surveillance. These new requirements would mandate that every state provides the CDC with the state of residence for any person seeking an abortion in the state, the medical reason for an abortion, the gestational age of a fetus, and the method of abortion.