Trump is restoring long-standing Republican anti-abortion policies

President Trump on Friday restored a longtime Republican anti-abortion policy known as “Mexico Rule” Which protects federal funds from going to any foreign non-governmental organization that performs or promotes abortions.

The move came after he addressed thousands of abortion opponents in Washington on Friday to mark the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which created a national abortion law and which the court overturned in 2022.

Federal law already prohibits the apply of taxpayer dollars to support abortion services abroad. But in 1984, President Ronald Reagan went a step further, blocking foreign aid to nongovernmental organizations that discuss abortion as part of family planning services or promote abortion rights, even if those groups do not apply U.S. tax dollars to do so.

Over the course of four decades, politics has had a history of see-saws. Democratic presidents, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., have revoked it and Republicans have reinstated it. This has been true for 21 of the last 40 years.

That Mr. Trump reinstated the ban is no surprise. When he ran for president in 2016, he took a forceful anti-abortion stance, winning support from Christian conservatives by promising to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe. In the two and a half years since Roe was repealed, abortion has become a more complicated issue for Republicans, and Mr. Trump has not made it a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.

But Mr. Trump still must pursue the right wing of his party, especially because his pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a muddy abortion record. During a visit to Senators on Capitol Hill last month, Mr. Kennedy promised Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, to support restoring the policy as part of a broad anti-abortion agenda.

“He committed me to restoring President Trump’s policies at HHS.” Mr. Hawley posted on social mediausing the initials for the Department of Health and Human Services. “This includes restoring the policy in Mexico and ending taxpayer funding for abortions in the country.”

In April 2023, when he was running for president, Kennedy said he supported a federal ban on abortion after the first trimester, but quickly backtracked. His campaign released a statement that “Kennedy’s abortion position is that it is always a woman’s right to choose,” adding: “He does not support legislation to ban abortion.”

The following year he published long message on social media presenting his views. “I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unlimited up to a point,” he wrote. “I believe this point should be when the baby is delivered out of the womb.”

Reproductive rights advocates say Mexico’s policies are having a devastating impact on women abroad, increasing unintended pregnancies, cutting much-needed family planning programs and sometimes leading women to seek unsafe abortions, which are a leading cause of maternal mortality.

The last time Trump reinstated the policy, when he first took office in 2017, he also expanded it, directing the State Department to identify additional organizations that may be subject to the ban. Two years later, in 2019, Trump expanded the policy to ban federal funding to foreign groups that give money to other foreign groups that perform abortions.