Oswald Clark:
President Donald Trump was busy in his first ten days undoing many of the socially liberal policies on abortion and gender of the Biden administration.
President Donald Trump’s first two weeks in office saw a flurry of action from the White House through executive orders covering everything from immigration to celebrating the U.S.’s 250th anniversary in 2027, many of them undoing policies of the Biden administration. Among the policy reversals were numerous policies championed by the pro-life movement.
On Jan. 20, the Trump administration began making moves applauded by pro-life and pro-family groups when on his first day he announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization, took down a federal government pro-abortion website, acknowledged there were only two sexes (male and female), and ordered all embassies to cease flying the pride flag.
While pro-lifers praised Trump’s early notice that the U.S. would withdraw from the World Health Organization – a United Nations agency that promotes abortion throughout the world, including Red China’s former one-child policy – Trump waited until the end of his fourth and fifth days in office to deliver major wins for the pro-life movement.
On Jan. 23, Donald Trump freed 23 pro-lifers imprisoned after being found guilty of violating the Freedom to Access Abortion Clinics (FACE) Act. Trump vowed to free them during the election campaign and it was his first major promise to pro-lifers that he delivered, calling the pardons he gave the 23 individuals “a great honour.” The announcement was the day before the March for Life in Washington.
The next day, Jan. 24, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Elsie Stefanik, announced that the U.S. would rejoin the pro-life Geneva Consensus Declaration, which opposes the idea that there is an international right to abortion and commits signatories to upholding the sanctity of all human life.
That same day, Trump issued an executive order, “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” to end the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion. His order rescinded numerous Biden executive orders that violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Hyde Amendment, a federal law which prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding elective abortions in the United States. In another executive order, Trump announced he was resurrecting the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits U.S. foreign aid from funding international and foreign organizations that commit or promote abortion.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called the executive orders “a big win for babies and mothers.” She said, “With this action the president is getting American taxpayers out of the abortion business and restoring sanity to the federal government.”
Trump also vowed “to protect and defend a vote of the people, from within the states, on the issue of life,” which fulfilled his campaign promise to let states restrict abortion if they wish. While some pro-lifers, such as Frank Pavone, president of Priests for Life, applaud the policy of leaving regulating and restricting abortion to the states, others, such as Lila Rose, founder of Live Action, said that the pro-life movement cannot rest until abortion is banned throughout the United States by federal law or constitutional amendment.
Coleman Boyd, one of the imprisoned pro-lifers pardoned by Trump, told the BBC that he was “very thankful that he pardoned us” and “I think he’s done lots of amazing things in the first week” but “I think he is a horrible president when it comes to abortion” because Trump has said he would veto a national abortion ban of any kind.
On Jan. 28, Trump signed an executive order titled ““Protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation” to end the “maiming and sterilizing” of “impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.” No longer will the federal government fund or promote so-called gender-affirming care for minors that assists children and teenagers to thwart their natural growth and mutilate their sex organs. The Health and Human Services Secretary was tasked with taking “all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children, including regulatory and sub-regulatory actions” to prevent gender-affirming care.
Furthermore, the order stated, the government will end its “reliance on junk science,” most notably guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), “which lacks scientific integrity.” The new policy requires all agencies to “rescind or amend all policies that rely on WPATH guidance, including WPATH’s ‘Standards of Care Version 8’.”
