Groups opposed to abortion rights have celebrated many policy wins during the Trump administration. Now, reproductive rights advocates want the president-elect to reverse those actions.

Transcript

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

During the Trump administration, abortion rights have been restricted. Now with President-elect Biden coming into office, reproductive rights advocates are expecting many of those actions to be reversed. But as NPR's Sarah McCammon reports, that might not be so easy.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Tom McClusky is feeling good about battles won under President Trump.

TOM MCCLUSKY: He has probably done more pro-life things than many Republicans who have had two terms.

MCCAMMON: McClusky is with the anti-abortion rights group the March for Life. He points to Trump's reinstatement and expansion of the Mexico City policy, which forbids foreign aid groups who provide or refer patients for abortion from receiving U.S. funds. The Trump administration has made similar rules for family planning providers here at home.

Those same policies that McClusky is celebrating are a top target for abortion rights supporters who want Biden to immediately reverse what they call gag rules. Alexis McGill Johnson is the president of Planned Parenthood.

ALEXIS MCGILL JOHNSON: The harm that has been done by the Trump administration, the harm that has impacted, again, a lot of low-income and rural communities around access to the basic family planning services has been horrific.

MCCAMMON: Trump's policies have reduced the availability of those services provided through the federal Title X program almost by half, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Gretchen Borchelt with the National Women's Law Center says Biden will take office at a time when those rights are under threat on many fronts.

GRETCHEN BORCHELT: We're at a crisis moment for access to abortion.

MCCAMMON: Borchelt says that's not just about Trump. It's the culmination of decades of effort by groups who've worked to restrict the procedure at the state level, too.

BORCHELT: And so we need this administration to recognize that crisis and take steps not only to undo what the Trump administration did, which was add more and more restrictions, but actually to move us forward and get us to a better place than we have been.

MCCAMMON: Meanwhile, anti-abortion rights activists like Carol Tobias of the National Right to Life Committee are fearful of what Biden's inauguration will mean.

CAROL TOBIAS: I think it will be a dark day in history for unborn children.

MCCAMMON: Tobias says her group will continue working at all levels of government to pass abortion restrictions, including laws aimed directly at challenging Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

TOBIAS: We've had it for almost 50 years. There are legislators who want to be the sponsor of the bill that goes before the Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade.

MCCAMMON: Tom McClusky of the March for Life says abortion rights opponents are feeling optimistic with three of President Trump's conservative nominees now sitting on the high court.

MCCLUSKY: It's not just the Supreme Court justices, but they've put in some fantastic - I mean, a couple of hundred circuit court judges, as well.

MCCAMMON: Polls indicate a majority of Americans support the Roe decision, which guaranteed the right to an abortion but allowed states to increasingly limit the procedure as a pregnancy progresses. Later rulings, like Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, gave states more room to regulate abortion under certain conditions. Given the uncertainty around abortion rights in the courts, Biden campaigned on a proposal to codify Roe in federal law. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University, says it's unclear what that legislation would do.

MARY ZIEGLER: We don't really know what he means by that, other than the common denominator that there's a right to abortion and you can't ban abortions. But beyond that, who knows what he's talking about?

MCCAMMON: Biden also would need cooperation from Congress - unlikely if Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And with an increasingly conservative judiciary, there may be little Biden can do as president to stave off a wave of abortion restrictions in red states.

Sarah McCammon, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tags: biden administration  amy coney barrett  trump administration  trump  Abortion rights  Planned Parenthood  Supreme Court  President-elect Biden's policy priorities