Red Flag #1: Restricted Access to Reproductive Health Care in the U.S.

Red Flag #1:
Restricted Access to Reproductive Health Care in the U.S.

President Trump and his extreme anti-abortion appointees have put our health and safety at risk. They have launched a coordinated attack to make it harder to access reproductive health care, including emergency abortion care and contraceptive care.

• Need emergency abortion care? The Trump administration has made it clear that they no longer plan to defend pregnant people in medical emergencies—even if your life is at risk.

• Within weeks of taking office, the Trump administration dropped the government’s litigation efforts to enforce protections for emergency abortion care under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA). EMTALA requires hospitals to provide immediate, life-saving stabilizing treatment to all patients with emergency medical conditions.
• This case had challenged Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, one of the strictest in the country, as a violation of EMTALA. When Idaho’s abortion ban was fully in effect, it forced hospitals to airlift women out of the state while they were hemorrhaging so they could get life-saving abortions. In dropping this case, the Trump administration has turned its back on pregnant people in the most dire situations.

• Need access to birth control, cancer screenings, or other basic reproductive health care? The Trump administration has frozen funds for these services at many clinics—and yours might be next.

• The Trump administration has frozen millions of dollars in funds for certain Title X grant recipients. Title X is the country’s only federal program dedicated to funding family planning and related reproductive health services, offering vital care to low-income and marginalized communities.
• Title X clinics are the sole source of health care for many of their patients. Funding for Title X has historically sustained an estimated 4,000 clinics and, in 2023, supplied millions of people with essential care including pregnancy testing, infertility services, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), breast and cervical cancer screenings, HPV vaccinations, birth control, and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). 
• The funding freeze puts clinics across the country at risk of shuttering completely and jeopardizes the health of patients and families who already face financial barriers to accessing care.

• Serve in the U.S. Military?  The Trump administration has made it even harder for you to access abortion care.

• Servicemembers stationed in states that ban abortion need the ability to travel to get reproductive care because the military only covers abortion care under extremely limited circumstances.
• But President Trump has ended policies that helped servicemembers cover the cost of traveling for abortion care and gave them time off to obtain this care. These changes will make it harder for servicemembers to access the care they need and deserve, putting their health and safety at risk.

• Get care through the Veterans Health Administration? The Trump administration is poised to impose the strictest abortion ban in the country on VA health services.

• The Trump administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has submitted a regulation to the White House for consideration that we anticipate would reinstate a total ban on abortion care and counseling—even to save the life of the veteran. This would be the strictest abortion ban in the country.
• For some veterans, the VA is their only source of health care. With a ban in place, and 12 states that have banned abortion completely post-Dobbs, many veterans would be forced to travel great distances and pay significant out-of-pocket costs to access the care they need—if they are able to obtain care at all.

• Value bodily autonomy? President Trump is laying the groundwork to give embryos legal “rights” to prevent you from making decisions about your own body. 

• On his first day in office, President Trump signed an extreme and regressive Executive Order that attempts to federally regulate gender. Embedded in the order is language that argues that human life begins at conception—a blatant attempt to lay the groundwork for a legal standard of “personhood at conception” that may be used to advance future bans on access to reproductive health care, including abortion.