A website created by the Biden administration just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has been shut down by the Trump administration. A Biden-Harris campaign rally in January 2024 is pictured.
/Bloomberg via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On the second day of the second Trump administration, a search for the term “abortion” on the website for the federal Department of Health and Human Services brings up 166 results. The top hit is from January 24, 2020, during President Trump’s first term, and is about how California violated the rights of two religious organizations that wanted to offer health plans that excluded coverage for abortion.
Trying to sort the results to see the most recent items first returns no links at all and the message reads “search unreachable.”
A site the Biden administration launched after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ReproductiveRights.gov, is now a broken link. (An archived version of the site is still viewable through the Internet Archive.)
These changes to the information available on government websites reflects quiet moves on the part of the new Trump administration on abortion.
Abortion was not mentioned or referenced in Trump’s inaugural address. It was also not a focus of the dozens of executive actions he took after being sworn in. And a series of policy moves on abortion that are usually “almost automatic” when a Republican president takes office were notably missing from Trump’s first orders of business, says Mary Ziegler, law professor at UC Davis who has written extensively on abortion.
For example, she notes that Trump did not immediately reinstate the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule, that limits funding for international organizations that provide family planning services.
“I think it’s too early to say we’re not going to see pretty significant action from the Trump administration on abortion,” Ziegler says. He could, for instance, revive the Comstock Act, or limit the availability of abortion medication via telehealth, but in his first day, he did not seem eager to signal those kinds of policies were coming. “It may be that Trump simply wants to do those things when the lights aren’t as bright, and it may be that he doesn’t want to do them at all, but it’s too early to know which of those possibilities it is.”
During Trump’s first term, “conscience rights” ruled the day when it came to abortion, which was still legal in all states. Rights were oriented towards religious organizations and providers that objected to abortion. The HHS.gov website appears to have been quickly edited to reflect that view again. HHS did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Biden administration held that abortion is an individual right. Now, content that reflects that position is hard to find on federal government websites. Some material is still online, however, including a 2022 action plan to “protect and strengthen reproductive care.”
The now-defunct ReproductiveRights.gov site included information about people’s rights to contraception, abortion medication and procedures, and emergency and preventive care while pregnant. It also directed people to AbortionFinder for information about state restrictions and financial assistance for people seeking abortions.
Trump’s choice to lead HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has not yet had his confirmation hearing scheduled. Until last year, Kennedy took a very different stance on abortion than Trump, stating he was firmly in favor of abortion access. It is an open question whether anti-abortion Republicans in the Senate will support him.
