People gather for the Women’s March to the White House at Freedom Plaza on Nov. 02, 2024, in Washington, DC. Reproductive rights groups plan to mobilize against possible attacks on newly enshrined rights in seven states and against efforts to impose more restrictions on women’s reproductive health. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Originally published by The 19th
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory has energized anti-abortion groups, even as abortion rights organizers notched victories on Election Day. Now, reproductive rights groups are preparing for legal and legislative battles in a new, less friendly environment.
They are planning to embrace a multipronged approach: challenging anti-abortion policies in court, organizing political protests, and lobbying state and national lawmakers to oppose proposed bans.
“We’re going to use every tool available to us, whether with the courts, legislatures or governors, or in the streets,” said Jessica Arons, a director of policy at the ACLU.
Until now, abortion rights groups have focused much of their energy on ballot initiatives to secure abortion rights in state constitutions. By putting it in the hands of voters, they have enshrined protections in 11 states and defeated anti-abortion measures in two more since Roe v. Wade fell.
That strategy, which absorbed millions of dollars, is hitting its endpoint. There are only three states left that allow the direct democracy approach — Arkansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma — where voters have not yet weighed in on state abortion rights. (An effort this year to put an Arkansas abortion rights measure on the ballot was blocked by the state courts.) All three of those states have elections in 2026. Abortion rights supporters could also try again to pass protections in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, the three states where such measures failed in the 2024 elections.
Whether abortion rights organizations will seize those remaining ballot measure opportunities isn’t yet clear, said Jennifer Dalven, who directs the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “We’ll take every opportunity we can, but we have to do a little more of a close look at what happened and where we can go next,” she said.
But direct votes will no longer be the strategic centerpiece. Instead, abortion rights organizations, including large national organizations such as the ACLU and smaller volunteer-staffed local abortion funds, are now shifting their focus. They’re solidifying protections that have already been enacted and preparing to play defense against possible new state and national restrictions.
“We will likely be forced to defend current access points and fight against insidious attempts to force government agencies deeper into our private lives and decisions,” said Ashley All, a political strategist who worked on a 2022 abortion rights campaign in Kansas as well as on a Montana campaign this past election cycle. “Americans must speak out loudly and forcefully every time politicians in Washington or state legislatures try to take away our rights or interfere in our medical decisions.”
Much of the next steps for abortion rights groups will hang on how much influence anti-abortion groups wield in the new Trump administration. In his first term, Trump was a staunch ally to abortion opponents — even campaigning on an anti-abortion platform in 2020 — but some anti-abortion groups fear that the unpopularity of abortion restrictions may change his decisions.
Still, abortion opponents are pressing ahead in their advocacy, focusing in particular on curtailing access to the medications used in most abortions. Anti-abortion organizations and some lawmakers have expressed concern about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who has been inconsistent on whether to support national abortion restrictions. But Kennedy has been open to conversations about how to win their support, including potentially appointing strident abortion opponents such as Roger Severino, a former Trump official and diehard abortion opponent, to a senior position. Severino wrote the HHS chapter of the conservative policy paper Project 2025, which endorsed taking mifepristone, one of the pills used in most abortions, off the market. Politico reported that Trump’s transition team has rejected the push to install Severino.
Looking beyond the federal government, some abortion opponents are pushing for states to cut off access to the online resources people have used to circumvent their home states’ abortion bans.
One prominent anti-abortion group, Students for Life, has crafted model state bills that would ban the distribution of abortion pills and give fetuses the same legal protections as people. In Texas, a state lawmaker has introduced legislation intended to stop groups like abortion funds, the small nonprofits that help cover costs associated with care, from helping people travel out of state to access the procedure. The legislation also aims to make it harder for people to learn about and order abortion pills online.
With a potentially hostile administration and conservative-led states potentially moving to enact more restrictions on abortion, abortion funds anticipate more requests for support.
The Chicago Abortion Fund, one of the nation’s largest, has brought on more Spanish-speaking staff — they expect more callers coming from Florida, where this year’s ballot initiative failure leaves a six-week abortion ban intact. They are also seeking more funding; this past October alone, the fund disbursed about $750,000, said Qudsiyyah Shariyf, the fund’s interim executive director.
“We’re in this for the long haul, but we’re going to need to have some really tough decisions and potentially shifts in our program to remain sustainable,” Shariyf said.
The Brigid Alliance, which financially supports people who have to travel for an abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy — a point some abortion opponents have touted as a compromise point for national restrictions, even though medical complications can still arise well beyond that week — is working with legal advisers to ensure its work is protected in a potentially hostile political climate. The fund is planning to start supporting people earlier in pregnancy, anticipating a growing need for travel-related support.
It is also exploring what it would look like to send clients abroad for abortion, a contingency plan if the Trump administration does put forth national restrictions. But there are challenges. Many people who travel for their abortions do not have a passport; some don’t have identification paperwork at all.
“The abortion support organizations really need the advocacy political organizations fighting against this national ban,” said Serra Sippel, the fund’s executive director. “That is the biggest threat to care that is looming.”
Their biggest hope, many said, is making an abortion ban politically unviable, leveraging mechanisms like direct protest to deter Trump from backing such a policy.
“We’re certainly prepared to show out in force and mobilize our millions of members to resist any further erosion of abortion rights at the federal level,” Arons said.
Even without national restrictions, health policy analysts and reproductive rights organizations alike anticipate a federal environment less protective of abortion rights.
Under President Joe Biden, federal agencies such as the Department of Justice and HHS worked to secure abortion access after the fall of Roe. Those actions included defending the availability of mifepristone against an ongoing lawsuit, and issuing guidance that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals to provide abortions when it is the required stabilizing treatment in a medical emergency. Project 2025 suggests dismantling those policies.
“I’m not confident of anything under the new administration,” said Molly Duerte, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has filed multiple lawsuits challenging state abortion bans.
The ACLU, which frequently challenged Trump policies in his first term, is preparing to potentially revise that role in defense of abortion rights, focusing in particular on potential threats to medication abortion and on EMTALA-protected abortions.
“We will be ready to go to court to block actions that unlawfully seek to prevent access to abortion care,” said Lorie Chaiten, a senior staff attorney at the organization’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Still, she said, she thinks it’s possible that Trump, who retreated from more strident anti-abortion language over the course of his campaign, avoids imposing unpopular new restrictions. Polling largely shows that Americans oppose abortion restrictions, and in several states Trump won — including Florida, Arizona and Nevada — voters who backed the GOP ticket also supported abortion rights.
“I have to hope he will keep his promises that he will not wreak further havoc on abortion access, and I think the voters are watching,” she said.
The 19th is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.