On 45th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade, Trump Is Closer Than Ever to Undermining Promise of Abortion Rights

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 -- The Center for American Progress issued the following news release:

Ahead of the 45th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that established abortion rights, President Donald Trump and Congress continue to find ways to undermine rights and access to abortion care, as well as other reproductive health services for all women. Since taking office, Trump has stacked the federal and lower courts with judges expected to be anti-choice and signed into law a rollback of Obama-era protections of federal funds for Title X providers such as Planned Parenthood. He reinstated and expanded the Global Gag Rule, ordered a ban on the usage of the word "fetus" in CDC documents, and proposed a budget that cut National Institutes of Health funding in the midst of critical research needs related to the Zika virus.

On the congressional front, in the past year, the majority anti-choice Congress has introduced 58 anti-choice bills, including 20-week and six-week abortion bans; introduced a tax bill with personhood extending 529 college savings plans to "an unborn child... at any stage of development"; attempted to codify the Hyde Amendment; and made numerous attempts to impede both public and private insurance coverage of abortion.

A new report from CAP outlines these ways as well as many others that President Trump and Congress continue to threaten the promise made by Roe v. Wade.

"The very core of the Roe decision is being shaken under the Trump administration," says Jamila Taylor, senior fellow with the Women's Initiative at CAP. "This administration and the majority anti-choice Congress have shown ferocious and obsessive efforts to undermine access to abortion and other reproductive health services for women on all fronts. In a political environment fueled by unprecedented hostility toward women, these efforts to stifle women's rights and freedoms are a particularly striking reality of how far this administration will go to take regressive steps on women's equality. Now more than ever, it is vital that the right to access safe, legal abortion is protected."

Read the report: "45 Ways Trump and Congress Threaten the Promise of Roe v. Wade" by Jamila Taylor, Anusha Ravi, Lia Parada, Kate Bahn, and Michele Jawando (https://www.americanprogress.org/?p=445207)

For more information or to speak to an expert, please contact Sally Tucker at 202-481-8103 or sstucker@americanprogress.org.