A Democracy Drive Thread
The campaign against abortion and reproductive health — federal, state, and judicial: defunding, drug reviews, destroyed contraceptives, and rolled-back protections, each sourced.
A running, sourced record of the campaign against abortion access and reproductive health care. Entries are listed in chronological order.
September 10, 2024
In his own words
He has repeatedly taken credit for ending Roe.
January 23, 2025
On the ground
“They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said as he signed the pardons on Jan. 23, 2025, the day before the March for Life. Handy had been sentenced to nearly five years for directing blockaders to chain themselves together to block the clinic’s doors; a nurse was injured. Trump pardoned her and her nine co-defendants, among others. Some of those pardoned later went on trial for a new clinic blockade.
“They should not have been prosecuted.”
April 1, 2025
The administration froze more than $65 million in Title X family-planning grants — hitting 16 of 86 grantees, including all nine Planned Parenthood grantees — citing alleged civil-rights and immigration-related violations.
May 5, 2025
The DOJ asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri that sought to curb telehealth access to the abortion pill mifepristone — arguing on procedural grounds, without defending the drug's access on the merits.
June 3, 2025
The administration rescinded EMTALA guidance that had directed hospitals receiving Medicare funds to perform emergency abortions when needed to stabilize a patient — removing a federal protection for emergency care in states with bans.
June 26, 2025
In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld South Carolina's move to bar Medicaid reimbursement for non-abortion care at Planned Parenthood, letting states defund the provider over the abortions it performs separately.
July 28, 2025
The State Department confirmed it would incinerate roughly $9.7–10 million in U.S.-funded contraceptives — including IUDs, implants and birth-control pills — stockpiled for women in low-income countries, rather than distribute or donate them.
September 2, 2025
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett released a memoir, “Listening to the Law,” defending her vote in Dobbs v. Jackson to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the federal constitutional right to abortion.
September 22, 2025
At a White House press conference, Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged pregnant women to avoid acetaminophen (Tylenol), claiming a link to autism that major medical organizations reject; Trump repeated the advice on Truth Social in January 2026.
September 25, 2025
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced a new safety review of mifepristone — used in about two-thirds of U.S. abortions — a step anti-abortion groups had pressed as a path to restricting or banning it.
November 6, 2025
Florida AG James Uthmeier filed a racketeering (RICO) suit against Planned Parenthood, alleging it misrepresented the safety of abortion pills in violation of the state's deceptive-practices law.
November 21, 2025
New State Department instructions for the annual global human-rights report told embassies to treat government support for abortion — alongside DEI policies — as human-rights violations, recasting reproductive access as an abuse.
January 26, 2026
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a planned lecture by OB-GYN Dr. Shelley Sella on the medical and ethical considerations of abortion later in pregnancy.
February 25, 2026
State Rep. Jody Barrett offered an amendment that would make women who obtain abortions eligible for homicide charges — and thus potentially the death penalty — under Tennessee law. The measure failed in a House subcommittee in March 2026 after the Senate sponsor said it lacked the votes.
April 14, 2026
On the ground
The report said Biden prosecutors sought longer sentences for anti-abortion defendants than for abortion-rights defendants. Among those fired was Sanjay Patel, a longtime Civil Rights Division specialist in FACE Act cases. A Michigan prosecutor fired earlier, Sunita Doddamani, sued, calling her dismissal political retaliation. Trump had pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters convicted under the law in January 2025.
June 24, 2026
The Department of Health and Human Services moved to cancel 53 of the 67 active Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants — awarded under the Biden administration to curb unintended pregnancies — after a review branded many of their curricula “sexually explicit,” “age-inappropriate,” and “medically inaccurate.” The roughly $72 million was redirected into new grant streams oriented toward promoting childbearing. In August 2026 a federal judge halted the overhaul.