'Unilaterally': Writer shares simple way Trump could 'destroy' national abortion right

There’s a simple way Donald Trump could force a national abortion ban on day one if he’s re-elected to the White House, a Washington Post writer warned Friday.

Despite his allies ducking the question amid fears of its unpopularity with voters, and Trump himself saying he wouldn’t sign legislation, columnist Catherine Rampell warned he wouldn’t have to.

He also wouldn’t need approval from Congress, she wrote. Trump could effectively make abortion illegal across the country “unilaterally.”

“The next president could sharply limit access to reproductive care nationwide unilaterally, through administrative action alone,” she wrote.

“As incoherent as Trump’s many abortion stances have been, there are plenty of signs he would choose this path.”

Rampell wrote that after the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision stripped the national right to abortion, President Joe Biden has worked hard behind the scenes to protect access through regulations and lawsuits.

“All of which Trump as president could easily unravel or reverse,” she wrote.

As an example, Rampell focused on the legal fight over if hospitals must provide abortions to prevent serious threats to the mother’s health. In six states, there are no exceptions, even if the mother’s life is at risk. Other states have laws that are vague, Rampell wrote.

The Biden administration has argued that a federal law necessitating “stabilizing treatment” to patients in an emergency must include access to abortion. It’s been challenged many times and has been defended in federal court.

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“If Trump returns to office, he could easily stop defending the Biden interpretation in federal court — or more simply, just withdraw the Biden guidance entirely,” Rampell wrote.

“This is precisely what Project 2025, the policy playbook written by scores of Trump aides, recommends he do.”

Another Biden regulation stops health care providers from giving state law enforcement access to details of patients who cross state lines to get care.

“Again, a future president could decide not to defend the case or to rescind the policy so that it’s easier for Texas to prosecute women who cross state lines for reproductive care,” the columnist wrote.

“Those are measures Trump could take to make reproductive care (even) less accessible to pregnant women in red states. But he would have influence over the treatments women in blue states receive, too — including through potential restrictions on medication abortion,” she went on.

There is also a lot he can do to affect on-going challenges that seek to ban drugs like mifepristone, which are used in most abortions.

“These and other technical, bureaucratic possibilities haven’t received much airtime this election cycle. But they matter,” Rampell wrote.

“There might not be much more the next White House occupant can do to unilaterally improve women’s access to critical (and sometimes lifesaving) reproductive care, but there’s plenty they can do to destroy it.”