Latest news with #FreedomofAccesstoClinicEntrances
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump's DOJ Has Put Reproductive Health Clinics Under Threat
Calla Hayes, the executive director of A Preferred Women's Health Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, is used to protesters. The clinic sees thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators outside of its doors each year; the same group of faces greets her each day. But in the months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, she's seen a change in their behavior. Hayes believes that turnover in the White House, along with the Supreme Court decision nullifying Roe v. Wade in 2022, has emboldened the activists outside her clinic's doors to start 'pushing boundaries.' 'They're just, like, giggling with glee, because they're getting to push and see how far they can go,' said Hayes about the newly empowered anti-abortion protesters. The shift in atmosphere came as the Trump administration scaled back enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act, which was approved on a bipartisan basis in 1994. That measure outlawed obstruction and property damage intended to hamper a clinic's ability to conduct reproductive health services, including abortion. But with the Trump administration's order on the FACE Act, a bomb threat like the one Hayes's clinic received in the summer of 2024 is no longer considered to be a threat worth reviewing by the federal government; indeed, the FBI has communicated to Hayes that it has dropped its investigation of the incident. In a memo announcing its change in policy, the Department of Justice argued that the FACE Act was a 'prototypical example' of weaponizing the legal system against conservatives. The agency will now only enforce the law under 'extraordinary circumstances,' such as cases involving 'death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.' Shortly after taking office, Trump also pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted under the FACE Act, many of whom are now pressing forward with efforts to continue to obstruct abortion services. Julie Burkhart, the founder and president of Wellspring Health Access in Casper, Wyoming, is intimately familiar with what can happen if abortion opponents decide to take drastic action. An arsonist set fire to Wellspring, the only facility providing procedural and medication abortion in the state, weeks before it was scheduled to begin seeing patients in 2022. The damage to the building set back its opening by a year. The threat has not been eliminated: Burkhart said that she had been recently alerted to videos posted to social media 'alluding to the fact that it wouldn't be a bad idea if it were set on fire again.' 'It really sends, you know, a chill down all of our spines, because we don't know who in law enforcement is going to have our back,' said Burkhart. 'If, God forbid, there were a shooting, or an arson, or a place being flooded—any act of violence at a facility—we just don't know who's going to be there to respond and to help us.' Without guarantee of federal response, Hayes is also concerned about how local law enforcement will engage. Despite spending several years building a relationship with city officials, the recent public struggles of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department—including an ongoing audit of an alleged settlement with the police chief, who is now retiring at the end of the year—have left Hayes worried about the degree to which the department will be able to focus on threats to the clinic. 'It's always just that much more frustrating when [protesters] do something, and maybe the cops do come and they ask them to stop, but there's no no charges, there's no accountability, there's no nothing,' said Hayes. 'You're seeing this confusion about what to enforce and what not to enforce.' Meanwhile, abortion opponents are urging local law enforcement to follow the federal government's lead and stay out of their way. 'If you're a Christian police officer, a pro-life police officer, you need to commit in your heart not to arrest rescuers that are defending children, leave them be, even if it costs you your job. If you're not willing to protect the children yourself, let us do it,' said Jonathan Darnel, one of the anti-abortion activists pardoned by Trump, in a recent online event. Although the threats against clinics have yet to reach the apex of the anti-abortion demonstrations of the 1980s and 1990s, before the FACE Act was approved, providers warn that the current political environment could lead to a return to those conditions. A recent report published by the National Abortion Federation outlined thousands of incidents of violence and disruption against clinics in the years 2023 and 2024. This included 777 instances of obstruction of clinics, 621 instances of trespassing, 296 threats of death or harm to abortion providers and patients, and 128,570 protesters demonstrating outside of clinics over that two-year period. The report also noted that disruptions were likely being underreported, as clinics may not report all incidents, and not all abortion providers are members of NAF. Providers are also wary about the growing prevalence of 'abolitionist' sentiment among abortion opponents who believe that people who seek abortions should be criminally liable. While this notion is still on the fringes of anti-abortion politics, it has become increasingly acceptable among mainstream politicians, with more than a dozen bills introduced in state legislative sessions across the country to assign personhood to embryos. Although these measures are considered long shots for passage, providers worry that the Trump administration's actions and the Dobbs decision have granted abolitionists a second wind. 'We've already talked to clinics in 2025 who have experienced increased hostility, higher numbers of protesters, and [are] really noting that it seems like the protesters have had a shift and are just emboldened and more aggressive and hostile under this administration,' said Melissa Fowler, the chief program officer at NAF. Fowler noted that, in the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents may travel to demonstrate at clinics in other states where the procedure remains legal. While 12 states have implemented a total ban on the procedure, there has been an increase in abortions since the Dobbs decision, in part because pregnant people seeking abortions will travel out of state. She also said that even in states where abortion is prohibited, clinics that provide other reproductive health services will still attract protesters. 'It really just shows, I think, that these protesters don't really care about what they're doing or the effect it has on people, and they really just continue to target anyone that walks into a facility,' Fowler argued. Burkhart added that the worries about threats can be detrimental for both patients and clinic staff, which in turn can hamper their ability to provide care. 'That psychological weight that people who work in the clinics carry, being yelled at and harassed going into a parking lot, that raises your heart rate. That's a stressor,' she said. Despite the potential risks and uncertainty, however, providers remain determined to offer abortion care, regardless of the political environment. Helen Weems, the owner of All Families Healthcare in Whitefish, Montana, said that her clinic was doing 'everything we can to heighten our security and our vigilance.' 'We won't be intimidated. We won't be cowed into shutting down,' Weems said. 'We will continue to show up for our patients, because the need continues unabated.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
What Trump Has Done on Reproductive Health Care In 100 Days
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Macomb Community College on April 29, 2025 at Warren, Michigan. Trump held the rally to mark his first 100 days in office. Credit - Scott Olson—Getty Images This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration's freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what's known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here's what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho's near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim. The Trump Administration dropping the lawsuit would have allowed Idaho to fully enforce its near-total abortion ban, even in medical emergencies. But the state's largest health care provider, St. Luke's Health System, had filed its own lawsuit a few months earlier in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case, and a judge temporarily blocked Idaho from fully carrying out its ban. Abortion rights advocates condemned the Trump Administration's decision to drop the lawsuit. Amy Friedrich-Karnik—director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health—says the case was, at its core, about protecting people's access to 'life-saving care' in the most urgent situations. On April 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began withholding Title X funding from 16 organizations. Enacted in 1970, Title X is the country's sole federally funded family planning program. The program, which does not fund abortion services, allocates more than $200 million a year for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS said it was withholding funds from the organizations in the Title X program 'pending an evaluation of possible violations' of federal civil rights laws, and the President's Executive Order that said undocumented immigrants are prohibited 'from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.' The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a membership organization for family planning providers, and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued the Trump Administration over the freeze. According to NFPRHA, the freeze is threatening about $65.8 million in Title X funds, potentially affecting more than 840,000 patients. Reproductive rights advocates have said the freeze would prevent some of the most vulnerable community members from accessing a range of health care services. 'When you go after Title X for contraceptive access, there's a ripple effect across all types of reproductive health care,' Friedrich-Karnik says. On March 27, HHS announced that it would reduce its staff from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees—about 10,000 from layoffs and an additional 10,000 from staffers who retired or resigned. Included in those cuts was eliminating 'the majority of employees' in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) reproductive health division, according to the legal advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights. A team at the CDC focused on compiling data on abortion access—including the number of people getting abortions and what methods they choose—has been eliminated, according to Shannon Russell, federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. 'It really stymies efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of [Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization],' Russell said during a press briefing. The staff working on the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which collected data on maternal and infant health, was cut. The team working on the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, which provided patients with information about options such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), was also eliminated. 'This is really hampering HHS's efforts to ensure that people are getting quality, essential reproductive health care and that they know their options,' Russell said. Experts are waiting to see what actions the Trump Administration will take on mifepristone, a drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for abortion use more than two decades ago. Years of research have proven that the drug is safe, but anti-abortion groups have tried—so far unsuccessfully—to challenge it in court, and during his confirmation hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump has expressed an interest in launching further research into mifepristone. Russell said the Center for Reproductive Rights also anticipates that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will seek to limit abortion care. In March, the VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services; the details of the rule have not been publicized, but abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will reinstate the VA's previous abortion ban, repealing a Biden-era policy that had allowed VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations. Friedrich-Karnik says the Trump Administration could withhold additional Title X funds or place restrictions on grant recipients, as the Administration did during Trump's first term. She adds that the DOJ may continue to take an anti-abortion stance in various cases, such as declining to prosecute protesters accused of violating the FACE Act. Trump's actions on reproductive rights have drawn support from anti-abortion activists. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that Trump 'set the bar for a pro-life president' in his first term, and applauded the actions he's taken within the first 100 days of his second term. In March, Trump said that he would be known as the 'fertilization president,' and the New York Times reported last week that the White House has been evaluating ways to convince women to have children. But Russell criticized the Trump Administration for offering what she called 'sweepstakes style incentives' to encourage people to have children without implementing policies to ensure that people have the support and resources they need to do so, while curtailing access to reproductive health care. 'They have made it more dangerous to be pregnant,' Russell said, 'and they've done nothing to ensure that people who want to grow or build their families are able to do so more affordably and more accessibly.' Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
30-04-2025
- Health
- Time Magazine
What Trump Has Done on Reproductive Health Care In His First 100 Days
This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration's freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what's known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here's what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. The Administration dropped a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to protect access to emergency abortions In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho's near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim. The Trump Administration dropping the lawsuit would have allowed Idaho to fully enforce its near-total abortion ban, even in medical emergencies. But the state's largest health care provider, St. Luke's Health System, had filed its own lawsuit a few months earlier in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case, and a judge temporarily blocked Idaho from fully carrying out its ban. Abortion rights advocates condemned the Trump Administration's decision to drop the lawsuit. Amy Friedrich-Karnik—director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health—says the case was, at its core, about protecting people's access to 'life-saving care' in the most urgent situations. The Administration froze Title X funding for 16 organizations On April 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began withholding Title X funding from 16 organizations. Enacted in 1970, Title X is the country's sole federally funded family planning program. The program, which does not fund abortion services, allocates more than $200 million a year for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS said it was withholding funds from the organizations in the Title X program 'pending an evaluation of possible violations' of federal civil rights laws, and the President's Executive Order that said undocumented immigrants are prohibited 'from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.' The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a membership organization for family planning providers, and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued the Trump Administration over the freeze. According to NFPRHA, the freeze is threatening about $65.8 million in Title X funds, potentially affecting more than 840,000 patients. Reproductive rights advocates have said the freeze would prevent some of the most vulnerable community members from accessing a range of health care services. 'When you go after Title X for contraceptive access, there's a ripple effect across all types of reproductive health care,' Friedrich-Karnik says. Mass layoffs at HHS On March 27, HHS announced that it would reduce its staff from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees—about 10,000 from layoffs and an additional 10,000 from staffers who retired or resigned. Included in those cuts was eliminating 'the majority of employees' in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) reproductive health division, according to the legal advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights. A team at the CDC focused on compiling data on abortion access—including the number of people getting abortions and what methods they choose—has been eliminated, according to Shannon Russell, federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. 'It really stymies efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of [ Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ], ' Russell said during a press briefing. The staff working on the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which collected data on maternal and infant health, was cut. The team working on the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, which provided patients with information about options such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), was also eliminated. 'This is really hampering HHS's efforts to ensure that people are getting quality, essential reproductive health care and that they know their options,' Russell said. What experts anticipate could happen next Experts are waiting to see what actions the Trump Administration will take on mifepristone, a drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for abortion use more than two decades ago. Years of research have proven that the drug is safe, but anti-abortion groups have tried —so far unsuccessfully —to challenge it in court, and during his confirmation hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump has expressed an interest in launching further research into mifepristone. Russell said the Center for Reproductive Rights also anticipates that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will seek to limit abortion care. In March, the VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services; the details of the rule have not been publicized, but abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will reinstate the VA's previous abortion ban, repealing a Biden-era policy that had allowed VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations. Friedrich-Karnik says the Trump Administration could withhold additional Title X funds or place restrictions on grant recipients, as the Administration did during Trump's first term. She adds that the DOJ may continue to take an anti-abortion stance in various cases, such as declining to prosecute protesters accused of violating the FACE Act. Trump's actions on reproductive rights have drawn support from anti-abortion activists. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that Trump 'set the bar for a pro-life president' in his first term, and applauded the actions he's taken within the first 100 days of his second term. In March, Trump said that he would be known as the 'fertilization president,' and the New York Times reported last week that the White House has been evaluating ways to convince women to have children. But Russell criticized the Trump Administration for offering what she called 'sweepstakes style incentives' to encourage people to have children without implementing policies to ensure that people have the support and resources they need to do so, while curtailing access to reproductive health care. 'They have made it more dangerous to be pregnant,' Russell said, 'and they've done nothing to ensure that people who want to grow or build their families are able to do so more affordably and more accessibly.'
The Hill
29-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
How Trump chipped away at abortion access in his first 100 days
President Trump steadily chipped away at abortion access during the first 100 days of his second term. Trump campaigned on leaving abortion decisions to the states, and has so far made no push to outlaw the procedure on a national level. But since he returned to office in January, he and his administration have taken steps to support anti-abortion activists and restrict access to abortion care not only in the United States, but around the world. Here are four moves the Trump administration has made on abortion so far in the president's second term. Pardoned anti-abortion activists Three days after returning to the White House, Trump signed an executive order pardoning 23 anti-abortion-rights protesters, some of whom were convicted of violating a federal law meant to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats. The law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, was passed in 1994 when crimes against abortion providers were on the rise. 'They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people,' Trump told reporters while signing the order. 'This is a great honor to sign this.' Trump's pardons included a group of protesters convicted of forcing their way into a Washington, D.C.-area abortion clinic and blockading the entrance in 2020. Protesters live-streamed the blockade on social media for several hours before they were arrested. Abortion clinics have expressed concern that the pardons will spark an uptick in protests and threats of violence towards patients and workers. Reinstated the Mexico City Policy In late January, the president re-instated a controversial policy that bars U.S. foreign aid recipients from discussing abortion. The Mexico City Policy, introduced during the second Reagan administration, has been rescinded by every Democratic president and subsequently reinstated by every Republican president since then. Trump previously restored the policy four days into his first term, and President Joe Biden rescinded it a week into his own four years later. Supporters of the policy argue that it prevents American taxpayer money from being spent on abortions overseas. But opponents of the policy, who refer to it as the 'global gag rule' due to the restrictions it places on what reproductive health providers can talk about with patients, say that there is already legislation in place that prevents this from happening. They contend that Trump reinstating the policy will weaken access to abortion care across the globe. Dismissed high-profile Idaho emergency abortion case In March, the Trump administration dropped a lawsuit filed by the Biden-era Justice Department that sought to protect the right to an emergency abortion in Idaho, where the procedure is severely restricted. After the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, an Idaho 'trigger ban' on abortion went into effect that made performing or assisting in an abortion a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. The Biden administration then sued the state, arguing that the ban made it impossible for emergency room doctors to provide emergency abortions to patients under their care and violated a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor (EMTALA) Act. Under the law, hospitals are required to provide immediate and life-saving stabilizing treatment for patients with emergency medical conditions. Last year, the Supreme Court returned the case to a lower court, which temporarily paused Idaho's abortion ban. But by dropping the case, the Trump administration paved the way for the state's abortion ban to be reinstated. Abortion rights advocates said the administration's decision put the lives of pregnant women at risk. Meanwhile, some anti-abortion groups praised the Justice Department for dropping the case. Pulled Title X funding The Trump administration earlier this year froze millions of dollars of federal funding intended to enable Americans to access birth control, cancer screenings and reproductive health care. The funding had been allocated under Title X, the U.S.'s only federal program solely aimed at providing affordable birth control and reproductive health care to low-income Americans. The program has been around since the 1970s and supported 4,000 clinics serving close to 2.8 million people in 2023 alone, according to the health advocacy nonprofit KFF. At least nine Planned Parenthood affiliates received notices about the program's funding being withheld beginning April 1. The first Trump administration similarly restricted Title X funding, issuing a rule in 2019 that barred reproductive health providers from receiving funds under the program if they mentioned abortion or referred patients for abortions. Planned Parenthood left the program because of the rule and re-entered in 2021 after the Biden administration reversed it. While freezing funds to some recipients, the president's second administration has also restored some Title X funding to two state health program s that were kicked out of the program under President Biden for failing to comply with some of its rules.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
AG Pam Bondi holds first meeting of anti-Christian bias task force
April 22 (UPI) -- Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday held the inaugural meeting of a task force dedicated to eradicating "anti-Christian bias" in the federal government. According to Bondi, the task force will identify any anti-Christian policies across the U.S. government, seek input from faith-based organizations to end anti-Christian bias, and fix deficiencies and regulations that may contribute to anti-Christian bias. Bondi told senior Cabinet officials during the meeting that since returning to the White House on Jan. 20, the Trump administration had dropped three ongoing cases against anti-abortion protesters and redefined the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act to ensure "abuse would not continue and that American tax dollars were not used to support the weaponization of our legal system to target Christians." "The Department of Justice will protect religious liberty for Christians and for all Americans," she said during the meeting. "We'll work closely with everyone around this table and take a whole-of-government approach to solving this problem and ultimately protect Americans' First Amendment rights." "Protecting Christians from bias is not favoritism," she continued, "it's upholding the rule of law and the constitutional promise." The launch of the task force comes after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February titled Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias. It highlighted the Biden administration's Justice Department prosecutions of protesters who obstructed abortion clinics as an example of what they seek to root out of the federal government. It also pointed out President Joe Biden's declaration of March 31 as Trans Day of Visibility, which last year coincided with Easter, as an example of anti-Christian bias, despite the date having for years been recognized as an international day of celebration for transgender people. While Trump enjoys strong support from evangelical and Christian voters, the Interfaith Alliance, which staunchly supports religious freedom of all Americans, has been critical of the Trump administration's emphasis on addressing anti-Christian bias. The group states there is "no evidence" of it in the United States and that "perpetuating this myth is deeply offensive to actual Christian persecution that happens in other countries around the world." In a statement published in response to Trump's executive order, the Interfaith Alliance said it will infringe upon the rights of those in the name of protecting the rights of Christians. "Instead of protecting the rights of Christians to pray and worship as they please, it uses the language of religious freedom to attack trans people, critique our right to reproductive freedom and defend discriminatory adoption policies," it said.
