All posts tagged "abortion"

'Concerning': Pope Leo XIV dishes rare criticism of Trump admin

Pope Leo XIV issued a rare comment, calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's speech to military brass "concerning" and the Trump administration's “inhuman treatment” of immigrants and the death penalty hypocritical for people who call themselves "pro-life" for opposing abortion.

The American-born pope was responding to questions from reporters outside his Castel Gandolfo residence late Tuesday, The Washington Post reported.

Leo apparently shook his head in response to questions about Hegseth's speech, delivering an unusual statement, as he has mainly stayed out of politics and the news.

“This way of speaking is concerning, because it shows, every time, an increase of tension,” Leo told reporters in Italian. “This wording, like going from minister of defense to minister of war. Let’s hope it’s just a figure of speech. Of course, there you have a style of governance meaning to show strength, so as to pile up pressure. Let’s hope this works and that there isn’t war. One always needs to work toward peace.”

The pope also indicated his hope for peace and said the plan for Gaza is "realistic." He added that he is hopeful it will be "accepted."

Reporters also asked him about the Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich's decision to give Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) a lifetime achievement award for his dedication to immigration, which drew some backlash from other clergy leaders in the state who argued the senator's position on abortion should not be overlooked ahead of the honor.

Leo said he was “not terribly familiar with the particular case. He added that it is “very important to look at the overall work a senator has done during, if I am not mistaken, 40 years of service in the United States Senate.”

I'm not a mother but I know Pam Bondi's view of motherhood is truly disturbing

I have yet to be a mother, but I froze my eggs a few years ago, and am thankful to have that choice to have a family of my own one day — a choice that was taken away from a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead in February, yet kept on life support and forced to carry her fetus until she gave birth this June.

This harrowing situation unfolded because hospital officials feared they'd violate Georgia's law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity.

A few years ago, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some anti-abortion advocates were taking issue with IVF procedures, citing that destroying unused embryos is equivalent to taking a life.

In May 2025, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. Upon hearing the news, I immediately felt concern for the individuals who kept their eggs and embryos at this clinic. While no individuals or reproductive materials were harmed, the fear was palpable for me, having stored my own eggs in a Massachusetts clinic. This incident was deemed an act of terrorism, carried out by the perpetrator because of his anti-natalist views — his belief that it is wrong to have children.

What all these stories have in common is the insidious attempt to control women — control our reproductive health, our bodies, whether we live or die. They are only the most recent examples of how women's choices are being systematically stripped away.

Even the way those in power respond shows a disturbing and deeply ingrained narrow view of women and their choices. In response to the Palm Springs incident, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated in a post on X, "Let me be clear: The Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable."

That sentence, though seemingly innocuous, reveals a troubling worldview. It implies that women are primarily valued as mothers, that our worth as women is intimately connected to our reproductive lives, and our health choices are directly tied to our ability to fulfill this singular role.

Yet there are myriad valid reasons why a woman may never have children: health issues, infertility, personal choice, not finding a suitable partner, or socioeconomic instability, to name a few.

Despite this, the current Trump administration and the conservative faction in our country seem fixated on justifying womanhood solely through the lens of motherhood. This reductive stance is evidenced by Vice President JD Vance's dismissive "childless cat lady" comment, where he questioned the stake of childless individuals in the nation's future, and further underscored by the Trump administration's proposals for “baby bonuses'” and tax-deferred investment accounts designed to incentivize childbirth.

Consider the ripple effects of this narrow perspective.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for states to make abortion illegal or incredibly restrictive, fundamentally stripping women of their agency and bodily autonomy. Once pregnant, in 41 states, a woman's body is now no longer entirely her own, but rather a vessel subject to state control.

The very act of bombing a fertility clinic, while deplorable, was deemed so primarily because a fertility clinic is associated with the creation of babies. The outrage stemmed from the perceived threat to potential motherhood, not necessarily the broader violation of individual liberty or the act of terrorism itself.

This singular focus extends to how women are perceived even in death. The Georgia case forces us to confront a horrifying reality: Even when a woman is brain dead, her bodily autonomy can be overridden in favor of a fetus. Her existence, in this context, is reduced to her reproductive capacity, even in her final moments.

This legal and ethical quagmire highlights how deeply ingrained the concept of women as mere incubators has become in some interpretations of the law.

Individuals should be valued for more than their potential or actual role as mothers.

I do not disagree that motherhood can be a profoundly important and vital aspect of life, and for many, it is. As someone who still hopes to be a mother, it is for me. Yet I do not know the future, and there is a real possibility that I may never have children. Therefore, to define a woman's entire identity and worth by her reproductive capacity is a dangerous reduction, not to mention emotionally charged for individuals such as myself.

Like any human, women are multifaceted beings with diverse aspirations, careers, contributions to society, and personal lives that extend far beyond the biological function of childbearing.

This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do. It limits our collective imagination of what a woman can be and achieve.

We must challenge this pervasive narrative and advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status. It is time to assert that a woman's life, and her death, should be her own.

How do you know anti-abortion crusaders don't care about women? Listen to them

There once was a group in St. Louis called “Common Ground” that came together in the heat of the abortion wars to seek a modicum of civility between activists on both sides of the debate.

I don’t remember it lasting that long. But as one of the most outspoken pro-choice voices at the time – in the late 80s and 90s — I remember being impressed by the effort, and by some of the lofty ideals like these:

Let’s agree that unwanted pregnancies are a tragic thing. Let’s work together to reduce their occurrence. And maybe we need to figure out better access to sex education and birth control. Or better healthcare services and economic aid. And how about efforts to make adoption more viable?

What could be wrong with any of that? Nothing, really. Although the record will show that this passing flicker of consensus did not turn out to change the world.

A few decades later, the anti-abortion forces achieved their dream of obliterating a woman’s right to an abortion with the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision. Last month, SCOTUS allowed states to withhold Medicaid dollars from abortion providers — even if they’re for essential health services unrelated to abortion.

And now comes Donald Trump’s mega-bill taking the next step: blocking organizations that offer abortions from being able to accept any Medicaid funding for other reproductive health care services. That’s tied up in court for now, but with SCOTUS’s Republican majority of justices content to grovel before Trump, it’s close to a done deal.

All that made me think of Common Ground. And how heretical it would strike an anti-abortion activist today to ponder a perverse notion such as reducing unwanted pregnancies.

The venom seeped Monday from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. In response to news that Planned Parenthood might need to close up to 200 of its 600 health centers — which provide birth-control, cancer screenings and a full range of vital healthcare services to millions — Matthew Hennessey, the deputy editorial features editor, waxed eloquent:

“That is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”

Hennessey, a man given to devoted paeans to his own college-age daughter, just isn’t about to demean himself with concern for others like her.

“The vital healthcare claim is hogwash, and everyone knows it. Killing babies is what Planned Parenthood does, to the tune of 400,000 a year. Abortion — not Pap tests or mental health — is the reason for its existence. Take that away and Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a glorified school nurse’s office.”

That's not just a lie. It’s a stunning slander from someone who absolutely knows better. It exposes how much the vitriol is about hatred and culture war. And how little about protecting life.

It begs a brief recitation of the facts.

Over the past year, Planned Parenthood health centers provided care to 2.34 million people across the U.S., as documented in the group's most recent annual report. This includes a full range of preventive and diagnostic services — the very kind that reduce the need for abortions in the first place.

Abortion care accounted for just 3 percent of all services provided at Planned Parenthood centers. Ninety-seven percent of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing to do with abortion at all.

Planned Parenthood provided more than 4.4 million birth control services in 2023-24 — a number that includes contraceptive prescriptions, emergency contraception, and long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), such as IUDs and implants.

Without access to affordable contraception, unintended pregnancies spike — and with them, abortions. If you think it’s a great idea to slash funding for this, then spare us the rhetoric about life.

Planned Parenthood also delivered 4.2 million STI tests and treatments, including more than 740,000 HIV tests, helping stem the tide of infections that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

It conducted almost 500,000 cancer screenings, including Pap tests, breast exams, and HPV vaccinations. These are services that save lives, albeit for the living, a group of no consequence to those who call themselves pro-life.

That’s because — whatever animates their intensity — those who would destroy the nation’s leading women-healthcare provider have no claim whatsoever to any form of moral superiority. Their callous willingness to cause so much pain to so many others is quite a reveal.

I won’t endeavor to speculate as to what they really want. But this much is certain:

They’re not looking for common ground.

'Heartbreaking': Trump cuts shutter clinic — force students to travel 50 miles for care

With the closure of a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic at the beginning of May, students from Utah State University in Logan, Utah, face a “scary” situation in terms of accessing health care, prompting the creation of a carpool to drive patients on two-hour round trips to a clinic 50 miles away, community members told Raw Story.

Bridget Ackroyd, a USU senior, said Logan was “secluded” and “in its own little bubble,” with no public transit to reach Ogden, the closest Planned Parenthood clinic that remains open.

The loss of the Logan clinic hurts students who "might be in family situations where they are not able to charge something like an STI test to their health insurance, but they still want to make sure that they're healthy and safe," Ackroyd said.

The Logan clinic is one of two Planned Parenthood health centers in Utah — among at least a dozen across the U.S., according to Raw Story analysis — to shutter since President Donald Trump took office and froze federal funds for family planning services.

“It's just heartbreaking that now we know that those folks who relied on us either have to travel, defer care or figure out other ways to access the kind of health care they've depended on,” Shireen Ghorbani, interim president of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, told Raw Story.

“It's a big blow to these communities.”

A late-March freeze on Title X grants — federal funds which support family planning services from contraception to cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted infections — is just the start of funding challenges for Planned Parenthood health centers across the U.S., with more than 300 of its nearly 600 clinics across the country utilizing Title X funds.

Proposed cuts to Medicaid as part of a Republican megabill that advanced out of the House Budget Committee late Sunday but is still being negotiated between GOP factions would hit Planned Parenthood centers which also receive reimbursement from patients paying for services with Medicaid.

“The dismantling of health care in this country is happening before our very eyes,” Ghorbani said, “and now in this new budget … removing Title X, reductions in Medicaid, all of this is really spiraling us into a very, very bleak future when it comes to access to health care, especially for folks living on the margins in this country.”

Planned Parenthood has lost more than $20 million in Title X grants and $6 million for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, said Laurel Sakai, national director of public policy and government affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

“We fully anticipate that we are kind of just the tip of the iceberg and that Title X funding may fully go away under this administration,” Ghorbani said.

‘Dismantling access’

The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah decided to shutter its Logan and St. George clinics on May 2, after the Trump administration froze $2.8 million in Title X funds.

In 2024, the clinic in Logan served 1,650 patients, and the St. George clinic served nearly 3,000, according to Ghorbani, who said 18 staff members lost their jobs.

Ackroyd, the USU senior, told Raw Story the closure of the Logan clinic was a “loss” for students who used a sliding-scale payment option instead of billing their parents’ insurance.

“If they're getting something like a birth control prescription or an STI exam, and they have parents that might have a very negative reaction if they see that charge, it puts into question the safety of those students that want to be able to access that health care without necessarily notifying parents,” Ackroyd said.

Alternative health care options in Logan are Intermountain Health and the campus health center but both rely on using insurance, Ackroyd said. Plus, she said, patients are likely to be stuck “waiting for sometimes hours and hours.”

Ackroyd said that at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Logan, she was able to get a next-day appointment for an intrauterine device.

“The Trump administration is dismantling access to … critical health care, by restricting these funds,” Ghorbani said. “It means that care goes away. People's jobs go away, and those decisions were made because of the actions of the Trump administration.”

‘Fundamental misunderstanding’

According to health policy nonprofit KFF, Planned Parenthood receives a third of its revenue from state and federal government funds.

But because of the Hyde Amendment, a federal measure passed in 1977, Planned Parenthood health centers do not receive any federal funds to provide abortions — which according to KFF make up just 4 percent of services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics.

In its newly released 2023-2024 annual report, Planned Parenthood confirmed that of more than 9.45 million services performed, 402,230 were abortions, while 34 percent of its revenue came from government health services reimbursements and grants.

Regardless, in late April, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced that defunding “big abortion” was among Trump’s policy priorities.

Defund Planned Parenthood photo (Photo credit: Matt Laslo)www.rawstory.com

Sakai said attacks on Planned Parenthood are “not terribly surprising considering they went after us during the first Trump administration.”

But, “Planned Parenthood is not a line item in the budget,” Sakai said. “Patients choose to go to Planned Parenthood in order to get their health care that they need, and they're trying to take away that right and that choice of people.”

Cara Schumann, deputy director of federal strategies at abortion justice organization, All* Above All, said one in 11 women, particularly those on Medicaid, get reproductive health care from Planned Parenthood clinics.

That means cuts to Medicaid as well as federal grants like Title X and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program would be a “double whammy” for Planned Parenthood, she said.

“This is them attempting to defund Planned Parenthood clinics for reproductive health care they provide, so cancer screenings, STI screenings, basic contraceptives,” Schumann told Raw Story.

“What it seems is just like a fundamental misunderstanding of what Planned Parenthood does, what health care is, what services people need.”

Sakai said Planned Parenthood was gearing up to work with “champions in Congress” to “fight back against [the cuts] with any tools they have, to show that this isn't really about the budget or about any of their concerns they're pretending to raise about waste, fraud and abuse of the Medicaid program.”

“We know their goal is to shut down health centers, and we know that our clinics are doing everything possible to keep care in their communities.”

EXCLUSIVE: Breastfeeding mom of US citizen sues Kristi Noem after being grabbed by ICE

'I got it done': Trump brags about ending Roe v. Wade — and says GOP must 'win elections'

Donald Trump Saturday once again claimed credit for terminating Roe v. Wade while pushing away his party's strict anti-abortion stances and reminding fellow Republicans that the GOP must "win elections."

Trump, who appointed the Supreme Court justices who ultimately eliminated the women's health law once deemed the law of the land, took to his social media network, Truth Social, over the weekend to ride a fine line on abortion. The issue is thought by many analysts to be a weakness for the former president.

"With the long sought termination (52 years!), by everyone, including Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, and virtually all legal scholars and experts, and with the help of six very wise and brave Supreme Court Justices, I was successful in terminating Roe v. Wade - Something which few thought was possible to do!" Trump claimed, without providing evidence of the universal favorability of the action that made abortions nearly impossible to obtain for some.

ALSO READ: 'Utterly stupid': Top far-right figures throw cold water on conspiracy about cats and dogs

Trump continued, claiming that "everyone wanted it to go back to the States, and a VOTE OF THE PEOPLE, and not be in the Federal Government, where it never belonged."

"I GOT IT DONE, and now people are voting all over the USA," the ex-president said. "Some of the votes are more Liberal than would have been thought, but the Vote is the Vote!"

Trump went on to say, "Like Ronald Reagan before me, and 90% of the Republican Party, I BELIEVE IN EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER - On that you must follow your heart! But remember, however, Republicans have to WIN ELECTIONS, AND LEAD OUR COUNTRY BACK TO GREATNESS!"

He added, "Russia is today talking WAR with the USA, we are closer than ever before, and only I can solve this dangerous situation!"

C-SPAN caller cut off after anti-woman rant on Harris: 'How many abortions has she had?'

A C-SPAN host disconnected a caller on Sunday after a misogynist attack on Vice President Kamala Harris.

During C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, a woman named Sarah called in from Indiana to say she would not vote for Harris in the 2024 presidential race because she was a woman.

"I just want to say, not at this time should there be a woman in there," the caller explained. "We're affiliated with two wars right now, and our leaders in other countries are sitting back laughing at us. She's weak."

Sarah also claimed Harris had done a poor job as "border czar" despite never actually having that title.

"And another thing, she has no children," she added. "Any woman that's never had children can't be talking about kids and grandkids and all that stuff if you've never had any children."

ALSO READ: Boebert, MTG and far-fight friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans

"And I'd like to know, how many abortions has she had?"

After that remark, the C-SPAN host quickly ended the call.

Watch the video below from C-SPAN or click the link.

Bad news for Trump: Harris will bring the receipts on Dobbs abortion decision

At 8 a.m. Monday morning, another Trump abortion ban will take effect.

As the state of Iowa joins the growing ranks of Republican-led states banning abortion at six weeks, Iowans will wake up to new realities of state-forced birth, where the government controls private medical decisions for over half the state’s population.

ALSO READ: Boebert, MTG and far-fight friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans

Kamala Harris will also wake up to a new reality. After President Joe Biden withdrew and endorsed Harris as the 2024 Democratic nominee, Harris campaign committee, along with other supportive committees and super PACs, together raised an historic $250 million in campaign donations in under three days, much of it from first time donors. Young voter registration surged in a day-over-day increase by 700 percent.

Anyone missing the connection between Trump’s abortion bans and the drumbeat for Harris isn’t paying attention.

Harris won’t let Trump/Vance flip the script on abortion

Although abortion was carefully scripted out of the headlines and speeches at the Republican National Convention, Harris will remind Americans how Trump bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade. He appointed three radical Supreme Court justices who were willing to lie to Congress under oath — and trash the credibility of the high court in the process — to overturn abortion rights.

Harris will also remind voters how Trump publicly congratulated himself, bragging in writing that:

“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone… Without me, there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to. Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!”

Indeed, thank you Donald Trump, for confirming in writing that you’re responsible for women’s-life-threatening six-week abortion bans, you’re responsible for forcing women and girls to flee their home states to stay alive, you’re responsible for Republicans gunning for armed menstruation police, you’re responsible for pushing frightened women to the brink of death before doctors can intervene to save them.

Very well done, “President TRUMP!!!”. Bragging about the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was probably the most consequential self-own you will ever make.

Why Trump/Vance efforts to “soften” state forced birth won’t work

Faced with opinion polls showing that a strong majority of Americans think Trump overturning Roe v. Wade was a “bad thing,” Trump is now marketing a softer position on abortion, saying that rather than a national ban, it should be left up to individual states to decide.

Vice presidential candidate and anti-abortion extremist J.D. Vance, who would criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest because “two wrongs don’t make a right,” and who thinks “childless cat ladies” should not equally participate in democracy, now parrots Trump’s “softening,”

Letting states decide via popular vote whether women — or the government — should make private health care decisions is more gaslighting than softening.

Under the 14th Amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States have been entitled to the same equal protection under the law since 1866, regardless of popular whim. The whole point of the 14th amendment was to remove fundamental human rights from the vicissitudes of popular opinion, which, as MAGA illustrates, is easily manipulated.

The 14th Amendment prohibits all states from making or enforcing any law that denies the equal protection of the laws to all citizens, or that deprives any person of liberty without due process of law; it does not subject these rights to periodic revision as popular opinion fluctuates.

ALSO READ: How much access did $50,000 buy someone at the Republican National Convention?

When writing Dobbs, lifelong misogynist Justice Samuel Alito wrote deceptively that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause could not protect women’s medical privacy, or abortion access, because “that theory is squarely foreclosed by the Court’s precedents, which establish that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification.”

In case you missed it, that was Alito selectively choosing to prioritize the Supreme Court’s “classification precedent” over 50 years of substantive due process precedent to reach his desired outcome.

Alito summarily rejected Roe v. Wade’s determination that a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy is a “liberty” protected against state interference by the substantive component of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. State-forced pregnancy and state-forced birth restrict women’s liberty for — at minimum — nine months. That’s not including however many days of painful labor, 18 years or more of financial struggle for most single moms and a lifetime of permanent medical changes resulting from pregnancy and childbirth.

Harris will stop the gaslighting

Helping themselves to Alito’s smug and dishonest dismissal of Equal Protection for women, Trump/Vance’s “let-each-state-decide” abortion stance subjects women’s bodies and lives to the whims of popular vote.

After owning Miss USA and similar beauty pageants for decades, it’s not surprising that Trump continues to see women’s bodies on a catwalk, subject to popular opinion and scorecards.

Harris will serve it back in ways Biden never could, due to Biden’s Catholic reluctance to say the word “abortion” in public. As recently as 2012, Biden affirmed his personal opposition to abortion in the most public of settings.

Harris isn’t reluctant. She has read, and understands, the assignment. She can communicate how abortion bans have increased maternal and infant mortality and decreased women’s equal opportunity to earn a living. She can explain how Republicans have unconstitutionally stripped half the U.S. population of equal protection under the 14th Amendment because Trump justices said they could.

Believed to be the first vice president to ever visit an abortion clinic, Harris talks about abortion rights clearly, forcefully and unapologetically, and she will help shape abortion into the pivotal issue in November — second only to preserving our republic from the marching threat of fascism.

Harris now shoulders the burden of defending the country from two ranting, misogynistic authoritarians, a relentless rightwing propaganda machine and deep pocketed corporate donors happy to sacrifice women’s civil rights if doing so will lower taxes and government regulations.

In stepping away from power despite his strong conviction that he could and should serve a second term, Biden displayed as selfless an act of sacrifice and patriotism as any president since George Washington. As heart-wrenching as it was to watch his Oval Office address last Wednesday, women who have had it up to here with Republicans’ cruel machinations under Dobbs are grateful finally to have a fierce messenger.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Conservatives feel 'abandoned' by Trump after RNC speakers leave out key issue

Anti-abortion advocates are feeling “abandoned,” by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has shifted the party-platform from staunchly pro-life to a side-stepped subject with a murky policy agenda during his second bid for the White House.

In an Op-Ed penned for the New York Times Friday, conservative policy analyst Patrick T. Brown bemoaned the future of a Republican party led by Trump waffling on abortion.

“The Republican nominee seems all too content to sell out those of us who got into politics to advance policies that protect what we see as human life from its earliest stages,” Brown writes. “At this point, the best-case scenario for pro-lifers may be hoping that a second Trump administration hires some social conservatives for key administration roles — but that is far from a given.”

EXCLUSIVE: Trump ‘secretary of retribution’ won't discuss his ‘target list’ at RNC

The column comes a day after the conclusion of a Republican National Convention where the topic of abortion was, “conspicuously absent,” the Guardian reports. Neither Trump nor his running mate Ohio Gov. J.D. Vance, who has previously called for a national ban on abortion, made any mention of it.

“Pro-life organizations that insist the G.O.P. remains as pro-life today as it was in the recent past are deluding themselves,” Brown writes in his Op-Ed. “And the socially conservative groups that cheer the former president’s commitment “to the causes that millions of Americans hold so dear — protecting life and promoting the family — may be signing up for their own political obsolescence.”

A May Pew poll showed 57% of Republicans still want to see abortion illegal in all or most cases, and following the convention some pro-life groups lashed out at Republican leadership for staying hush on the topic.

“The GOP can and must do better,” Students for Life Action president Kristan Hawkins wrote in a statement, as reported by The Guardian.

'Gearing up for a fight': Trump's latest move could cause 'skirmishes' among conservatives

Donald Trump has reportedly decided to slice in half the size of the Republican party's platform, a move expected to cause waves of infighting among GOP leaders and special interests.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the ex-president's "top advisers are planning to drastically scale back and simplify the official platform of the Republican Party," citing "a memo sent to the party’s platform committee."

"The memo — signed by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the former president’s two lead advisers — described their efforts to pare down the platform 'to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise and easily digestible,'" according to the report. "It dismissed past platforms as needlessly 'textbook-long' documents shaped by 'special interest influence' that had left the party and its nominee open to attacks from Democrats."

ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters

The report also noted that the move by Trump's team is likely to cause internal fights.

"The decision to cut the size of the platform sharply — the most recent one adopted by the party, in 2016, ran nearly 60 pages — is likely to prompt skirmishes among some conservatives and party activists who have spent years haggling over the document’s language," the Times reported. "One person close to the process who was granted anonymity to speak about the planning said the new platform could be half the size of the one in 2016."

Specifically, according to the report, anti-abortion groups are readying themselves to take on Trump.

"Anti-abortion activists, in particular, have been gearing up for a fight in case the Trump team seeks to dilute or delete longstanding language in order to make Mr. Trump appear more moderate on the issue," the article states. "In hopes of keeping any disagreements out of the public view, the party is planning to have the platform committee meet behind closed doors in Milwaukee a week before the broader convention. That would be a break from decades of precedent. The party’s platform committee meetings have been televised since at least 1984, according to C-SPAN archives."

You can read more here.

Biden confronts Trump on abortion: 'It's been a terrible thing what you've done'

President Joe Biden clashed with former President Donald Trump over the end of federal abortion rights.

At Thursday night's presidential debate, moderator Dana Bash asked Trump if he would ban abortion drugs as president.

"You take credit for the decision to overturn Roe v.Wade, which returned the issue of abortion to the states," Bash said. "As president, would you block abortion medication?"

"I will not block it," Trump stated before defending his record on Roe v. Wade.

"Everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted it back, religious leaders," Trump asserted. "And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court, and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted."

"Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the states," he added. "I did that. Now the states are working it out."

ALSO READ: Republicans weaponizing ignorance is a dangerous game

Trump made the false claim that Democrats kill babies "after birth."

"What happened is we brought it back to the states and the country is now coming together on this issue," he insisted. "It's been a great thing."

Biden responded directly to Trump.

"It's been a terrible thing what you've done," he told the former president.

"The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided, supported Roe. And that was that's this idea that they were all against it. It's just ridiculous."

Watch the video below from CBS or click the link here.