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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2025-06-19 11:11:24+00:00.
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Last week, a Trump supporter named Vance Boelter carried out a politically motivated double homicide in Minnesota, killing a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in what authorities describe as a targeted assassination spree. Found in his possession was a hit list containing dozens of potential targets, including abortion rights advocates and Planned Parenthood facilities.
According to available evidence, Boelter was an anti-abortion zealot who delivered evangelical sermons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo decrying American churches for their failure to stop the expansion of reproductive rights.
As horrific as Boelter’s rampage was, it could have been far worse. The Trump administration has emboldened anti-abortion extremists like him by dismantling protections for reproductive clinics and pardoning individuals convicted of threatening, assaulting, or obstructing clinic staff and patients. This pattern of state-sanctioned intimidation doesn’t just invite more violence—it’s part of a broader campaign to dismantle women’s rights and reimpose a strict patriarchal order soaked in Christian nationalism.
That conclusion is unavoidable once you begin examining the administration’s policies and its most high-profile officials. Take Vice President JD Vance, for example, who has disparaged childless women, questioned their commitment to society, and suggested their votes should not count. Or Elon Musk, who has been sued for fostering sexism in the workplace and recently reposted a tweet saying that only “high status males” are capable of running the country. Or Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has proposed a new policy directing federal funding to areas with high birth and marriage rates. Or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been accused of sexual assault and allegedly believes that women should not work, vote, or serve in combat.
This isn’t just a series of isolated incidents; it is a coordinated effort to drag the country backward to a time when women were expected to serve as housekeepers and incubators, without meaningful opportunities for education or career advancement.
The first step in forcing women out of the workforce and back into traditional household roles is stripping them of bodily autonomy through the restriction and criminalization of contraception and abortion care.
- According to a literature review by the Guttmacher Institute, access to the birth control pill “was responsible for as much as one-third of the considerable rise in 21–22-year-old women’s college enrollment from 1969 to 1980” and “accounted for more than 30% of the increase in the proportion of women in skilled careers from 1970 to 1990.”
- Access to legal abortion (Roe v. Wade) contributed to a 20% increase in women’s national labor force participation. According to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, we are now seeing the opposite trend—a decline in female employment growth—in states where abortion is currently banned.
The Trump administration froze close to $35 million in federal funding set to be disbursed to Title X Family Planning Program grantees (which includes health departments, school-based providers, and Planned Parenthood clinics), affecting 879 clinics in 23 states. All Title X funding is being withheld from California, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Utah, while partial funding is being withheld from 16 other states.
According to one estimate, up to 834,000 people may lose access to Title X-funded care if these funds are not released. These are largely low-income and uninsured individuals that go to Title X clinics to get free or reduced cost contraception and STI testing.
At the same time as cutting Title X funds for a quarter of grantees, the Trump administration restored Title X funding to two conservative states that are in violation of federal law requiring participating clinics to offer abortion referrals. The Tennessee Department of Health and Oklahoma State Department of Health each lost high-profile court cases challenging the Biden administration’s revocation of funding, but continued to refuse to comply with federal law.
The House Republicans’ reconciliation bill would essentially defund Planned Parenthood by cutting off Medicaid reimbursement to any nonprofit that primarily offers family planning or reproductive health services, provides abortions beyond the Hyde Amendment exceptions, and received more than $1 million in Medicaid reimbursements in 2024.
“They know so much of our patient base is on Medicaid or needs Title X to pay for their care, they know that cutting this off will allow them to cut off access to abortion and they are willing to make that trade,” [Ashlea Phenicie, chief external affairs officer of Planned Parenthood of Michigan,] said.
Another provision in the House reconciliation bill would bar Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans that include abortion coverage from receiving newly-appropriated federal payments related to cost-sharing reductions.
The Trump administration rescinded guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortion care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The Department of Justice dismissed its case, originally brought under Biden, against Idaho seeking to ensure hospitals provide life-saving abortions.
The Trump administration fired most of the employees at the HHS Division of Reproductive Health, including the entire team responsible for writing contraception guidelines.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., instructed the FDA “to review the latest data on mifepristone,” after a group associated with Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation released a junk science study alleging serious adverse effects. The study’s lead author, Ryan Anderson, wrote a book called “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.”
A Texas bill (which fortunately failed to advance this year) foreshadows how anti-abortion lawmakers plan to use environmental law to ban medication abortion. Senate Bill 1976 would have required the state to test the water at wastewater treatm…
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