Donald Trump has been our most Pro-Life President. As soon as he was in office in January 2017 he reinstituted and expanded the “Mexico City Policy,” renaming it “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance.”

In 1984, President Reagan announced at a meeting in Mexico City an expansion of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which already prohibited use of Federal Funds in foreign countries to promote abortions or pay for abortions, also to prohibit non-governmental organizations (NGO) from providing information or counseling about abortion or lobbying for abortion.  This was much decried and became known as the “Mexico City Policy” and later the “Global Gag Rule.”

Trump expanded this policy by requiring foreign NGO’s who accept US government global family planning assistance to certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” using funds from any source, including non-US funds.

In June 2019, the Trump administration extended the policy for the first time to prohibit foreign NGO’s that accept US government funding from providing any financial support, using any source of funds (including non-US funds), for any purpose, to other foreign NGO’s that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.

In July 2018, the Trump administration proposed rule changes for the Title X Family Planning Program which provides reproductive healthcare for young low-income women. In 1988, the Reagan administration had issued regulations prohibiting entities accepting Title X funds from promoting abortion as a method of family planning, prohibiting referrals for abortion (while still allowing counseling about abortion), and requiring physical and financial separation of facilities providing Title X services from those facilities providing abortions. This became widely known as “the Title X Gag Rule” or “Domestic Gag Rule.”  It received much criticism and was challenged, but the Supreme Court agreed in 1991 that the regulations are lawful. However, they were never enforced.

However, US Law written by Congress had restricted Title X from being used to promote or pay for abortion from the beginning. Trump fought the issue through the courts and placed new rules in effect in July 2019. Not only must entities receiving funds not mention or provide counseling about abortion, but their facilities for providing Title X care must be separate from those providing abortion, and separate financial accounting is required.

Trump also made Pro-Life appointments to key positions including judges, signed an executive order that a child born alive during an abortion must be provided medical care, and supported the right of those providing medical care to refuse to provide contraception and abortion on the basis of conscience or religious belief.

With respect to the latter, Trump issued rules providing an unconditional religious exemption to mandates of the Affordable Care Act over which the Little Sisters of the Poor had been sued since 2014. The case went to the Supreme Court which decided July 8, 2020 that Trump did have the authority to provide the exemption. The Little Sisters of the Poor have consecrated themselves to providing care for the elderly poor.

The trouble with all of the action taken by Trump is that Congress would not act to put anything into law. An incoming president who favors abortion can reverse all that Trump did to promote respect for life and human dignity.