The US Historical Aversion Toward Comprehensive Women’s Health Care
Published: July 21, 2025
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the landmark case of Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, reversing the almost 50-year precedent of the constitutional right to abortion nationwide. Justice Samuel Alito, representing the anti-abortion faction of the Court, believed that the original ruling “was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” This terrible ruling set the stage for 19 states to issue some version of an abortion ban, ranging from onerous restrictions to complete bans.
Beyond its restrictions on American soil, for the last half-century, the US has exported its extremist abortion position around the world. In 1973, under the United States Foreign Assistance Act, the Helms Amendment was implemented. This legislation, as written, states that no foreign aid can be used to “pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.” In practice, it has been implemented as a broad abortion ban, eliminating the chance for life-saving abortions in the most dire circumstances.
In 1984, the Global Gag Rule was first imposed by President Ronald Reagan. This policy bans the provision of legal abortion by foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but it goes beyond that to ban counseling and referrals — and over time, has come to also ban the support of legal abortion policies within their own countries. The Global Gag Rules states that NGOs cannot “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” using funds from any source — even with their own non-US funding. This deadly policy silences global conversations around abortion and reproductive autonomy and denies critical and lifesaving family planning and reproductive health care to millions of people around the world.
The Global Gag Rule has resulted in decreased contraceptive prevalence, disruption and gaps in global family planning practices and reproductive health infrastructure, and increased rates of unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion. During his first term, Donald Trump reinstated the Global Gag Rule and expanded the rule to apply to all global health funding, upwards of $8.4 billion.
Since Trump took office earlier this year, his administration has made every effort to attack foreign and domestic reproductive health services. Launching an assault on all foreign reproductive health assistance. After his Executive Order that froze and eliminated billions of dollars in foreign assistance funds, only a handful of global reproductive health programs remain.
H.R.1, the grossly misnamed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” recently signed by Trump, slashes Medicaid funding across the board and reiterates that funding is to be withheld from any domestic health care provider that provides abortion, even in states where abortion is legal.
In late July, it was the judiciary’s turn to take an ax to reproductive health and rights. The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in the case of Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, siding with the South Carolina law that barred Planned Parenthood of the South Atlantic from being a Medicaid provider in the state and ruling that Medicaid patients do not have the right to sue to see their medical provider of choice, In addition to denying patients’ this right to the provider of their choice, it guts health care for the 1 million South Carolinians on Medicaid, many of whom receive their care at Planned Parenthood.
This ruling, along with H.R.1, signals to other conservative states that they can go ahead and decimate Planned Parenthood funding in their states as well.
We cannot pick and choose which reproductive health care stays and which is discarded; comprehensive access to health care means the full range of safe, affordable care for everyone, everywhere.
The elimination of foreign assistance and the harmful domestic restrictions on access to family planning services mean that many people will be denied the health care they need. From international to domestic policies that destroy reproductive health and rights, the fight for reproductive freedom affects us all. Take action now by urging your members of Congress to protect our fundamental right to comprehensive reproductive health care and bodily autonomy.