What Trump Has Done on Reproductive Health Care in His First 100 Days
TIME, April 30, 2025
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 The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including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.
Texas Senate OKs Effort To Clarify Medical Exceptions Under State’s Abortion Ban
The Associated Press, April 29, 2025
The Texas Senate approved changes Tuesday to the state’s strict abortion ban that both Republicans and Democrats say would clarify medical exceptions and has drawn support from women who were told they could not end their pregnancies despite life-threatening complications. The unanimous passage of the bill in the GOP-controlled Senate – by a 31-0 vote – marked a rare moment of bipartisanship on an issue that for years has roiled the state Capitol as Texas Republicans have defended one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans and launched criminal investigations into alleged violations. Under Senate-passed changes, Texas’ ban would specify that doctors are allowed to perform an abortion if a patient is experiencing a “life-threatening” condition capable of causing death, and “not necessarily one actively injuring the patient.” The bill would also require doctors to receive training on the revised law. If approved by the state House and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, the revisions would mark the first time Texas lawmakers have modified language in the near-total abortion ban since it took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Texas’ ban would still have no exception in cases of rape or incest and the law would not spell out specific medical exceptions, which Senate Democrats noted even as they said they would support it and predicted it would save lives.
In Rare Good Deed, Montana’s Legislature Shut Down a Fetal Personhood Ballot Measure
Jezebel, April 24, 2025
Proving that showing up for abortion rights matters—even in ostensibly deep-red states—the GOP-controlled Montana legislature has defeated a bill that would have placed a measure enshrining fetal personhood on the next statewide ballot. The bill, HB 316, would have established citizenship rights for fetuses in Montana’s Constitution, but failed to secure the 100 out of 150 votes in the state legislature required to place an amendment on the ballot. HB 316 received just 58 “yes” votes in the House and 33 in the Senate, unable to draw the bipartisan support necessary to get on the ballot. (There are 100 members of the state House and 50 members of the Senate; Republicans hold 58 seats in the House to Democrats’ 42, and 33 seats in the Senate to Democrats’ 18.) In November, Montanans voted decisively for a ballot measure to protect abortion rights, passing the measure with a resounding 58% of the vote. Even before November, the Montana Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that bodily autonomy is protected under the state Constitution, which has shielded Montana from a total abortion ban since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. And, because Democrats were able to hold onto enough seats last election cycle, they were able to prevent 100 members of the legislature from placing an extreme fetal personhood measure on the next ballot. Unfortunately, the legislature did pass two anti-abortion bills that now advance to Governor Greg Gianforte’s desk, the Daily Montanan reports. HB 388 would empower anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to operate without state “interference,” effectively granting these facilities unfettered power to prey on, deceive, and surveil potential abortion seekers, which is CPCs’ primary purpose. The other bill, SB 154, would prohibit the sale of “whole human bodies” and “human fetal tissue.” Both of these are already illegal, mind you. The goal is to further stigmatize abortion and likely render abortion providers vulnerable to even greater state surveillance.
Judge Pauses Old Nevada Law Requiring Parental Notification for Minors To Get Abortion
The Associated Press, April 28, 2025
A long-dormant Nevada law requiring parents or guardians to be notified before a minor can have an abortion will not take effect this week following a federal judge’s ruling. The 1985 law has never before been enforced in Nevada because of court rulings that found it was unconstitutional based on Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion access a constitutional right for a half century. The ban on the Nevada’s law was set to expire Wednesday under a recent federal court order citing the 2022 reversal of Roe, but abortion rights activists appealed. That led U.S. District Judge Anne Traum to issue an order Friday saying the law won’t take effect yet to give Planned Parenthood time to ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the law unenforceable while it challenges it. If Planned Parenthood doesn’t file its request with the appellate court within seven days of Traum’s order, she said the law can be enforced in Nevada. Planned Parenthood has argued that the 40-year-old law, despite the reversal of Roe, remains “unconstitutionally vague” and that it violates minors’ rights to due process and equal protection.
Tracking Abortion Bans Across the Country
The New York Times, April 28, 2025
Nineteen states ban abortion or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which governed reproductive rights for nearly half a century until the Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2022. In some states, the fight over abortion access is still taking place in courtrooms, where advocates have sued to block bans and restrictions. Other states have moved to expand access to abortion by adding legal protections. The New York Times is tracking abortion laws in each state after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to an abortion. In some states that have enacted bans or restrictions, abortion remains legal for now as courts determine whether these laws can take effect. Abortion is broadly legal in the rest of the country and several states have added new protections since Dobbs. Many states limit abortion around fetal “viability,” the point at which a fetus could survive outside the uterus, or around 24 weeks of pregnancy. More details on the current status of abortion in each state are below.
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Note: The information contained in this publication reflects media coverage of women’s health issues and does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
