It may seem like we’ve been here before. But this rerun of the 2020 election takes place in a much changed world, with pressing national and international issues at stake. We’ve also learned more about President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump over the past four years
Here’s what both men have done and want to do on some of the most pressing issues. Biden has expressed his support for a federal right to abortion, while for Trump, abortion policy is more of a political transaction.
President Joe Biden
Biden favors a federal right to abortion and wants to prevent states from banning the procedure before fetal viability, but his ability to do so depends on having unified Democratic majorities in Congress.
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donald trump
Trump has said he would not sign a federal abortion ban but believes states should decide on their own restrictions. His Supreme Court appointments led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which ended federal abortion protections.
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Roe v. Wade
Biden
Roe v. Wade and its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion until the fetus can survive outside the womb. Biden wants to enshrine that right in federal law now that the Supreme Court struck it down.
“Give me a larger Democratic House and a larger Democratic Senate and we will pass a new law to restore and protect Roe v. Wade,” Biden said in January.
The warning about Congress is essential. You not only need Democratic majorities, but also 50 senators willing to get rid of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.
In the absence of such majorities, Biden’s Cabinet has taken some administrative steps to try to limit the effects of state abortion bans.
Its Department of Health and Human Services told hospitals in 2022 that, according to its interpretation, a law already in place regarding emergency rooms, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), English), requires doctors to perform an abortion if they deem it necessary to stabilize a patient. The constitutionality of that guideline is in the hands of the Supreme Court.
In April, the same department announced a rule to protect the medical records of many abortion patients from investigators and prosecutors.
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trump
Trump has stated that he believes abortion rights are a state issue. If he is elected again, he would allow states to limit abortion as they see fit, which could include monitoring pregnancies, as the former president told Time magazine.
“It’s irrelevant whether I feel comfortable or not,” he said. “It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”
Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Without them, Roe v. Wade would still be law.
He has boasted about that fact on multiple occasions, saying he accomplished what no Republican president before him could and, just in April, calling himself “proudly responsible” for overturning Roe.
“After 50 years of failure, with no one even remotely close to me, I was able to end Roe v. Wade, to the ‘astonishment’ of many and for the first time put the pro-life movement in a strong negotiating stance,” he wrote on social media. social last year.
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Federal ban
Biden
Biden opposes a federal abortion ban and has said he would veto one if Congress passed it.
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trump
In April, Trump said he would not sign a federal abortion ban, shortly after saying that states should be allowed to set their own policies to regulate abortion. Many states, since the overturning of Roe, have enacted laws prohibiting abortion in almost all cases.
The former president has long made contradictory statements and has sometimes suggested that he might support some version of a federal ban. Furthermore, in the Time magazine interview published in April, he dodged the question of whether he would veto a bill defining that life begins at fertilization.
His campaign did not answer yes or no when asked if it would support the implementation of the Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits the mailing of materials used in abortions, and which some Trump allies want him to use to restrict abortion. nationwide without a formal ban. “President Trump has long been consistent in his support of states’ rights to make decisions about abortion,” a spokesperson said.
Trump has framed his caution around abortion as a political issue because “elections have to be won.”
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Personal positions
Biden
Biden supported abortion restrictions as a senator and has said he is personally uncomfortable with them because of his Catholic faith, even as he seeks to make support for abortion rights a prominent part of his re-election campaign.
“I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not a supporter of abortion,” he said at a fundraiser last year, later adding, “Roe v. Wade got it right.”
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Trump
Overall, for Trump, abortion policy is a political transaction.
I used to be pro-abortion rights; In 1999, he said that he was “very pro-choice.” But when he ran for president in 2016, he portrayed himself as a staunch anti-abortionist to appeal to conservative Christians, and that’s how he governed.
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In vitro fertilization
Biden
In his State of the Union address this year, Biden asked Congress to protect access to in vitro fertilization.
This fertility treatment may be threatened by anti-abortion measures that consider embryos as subjects with legal rights, since it usually involves the creation of multiple embryos and the destruction or indefinite freezing of unused ones. The issue gained urgency after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that the frozen embryos were boys, jeopardizing in vitro fertilization in the state. Biden condemned the sentence.
The Alabama Legislature subsequently passed a law that granted immunity to in vitro fertilization clinics, but did not address the legal status of embryos.
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trump
After the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, Trump came out in favor of in vitro fertilization because he “wanted to make it easier, not harder, for mothers and fathers to have babies.”
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Medical abortion
Biden
Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States are medically induced with a regimen that includes a drug called mifepristone, which anti-abortion litigants and lawmakers have sought to restrict since the repeal of Roe.
Biden and his administration have defended mifepristone. His attorney general successfully urged the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit that sought to drastically limit access to mifepristone. The Court unanimously confirmed access to said medication in June, based on the plaintiffs’ standing; Anti-abortion activists have signaled they could try again with other plaintiffs.
“I continue to support the Food and Drug Administration’s evidence-based approval of mifepristone,” Biden said in a statement last year, adding that the lawsuit threatened “the from the FDA and endangered women’s health.
He also supported the FDA’s most recent decision allowing retail pharmacies to become certified to dispense mifepristone; Previously, only doctors, clinics, and some mail-order pharmacies could do so. The president has encouraged pharmacies to apply for this certification.
In an effort to mitigate the effects of state abortion bans, the Department of Health and Human Services warned pharmacists that they could violate civil rights laws if they refused to dispense drugs such as mifepristone, misoprostol and methotrexate, which can be used for abortions but also for other medical purposes. Texas filed a lawsuit over the matter, which is pending resolution.
The Justice Department also issued a legal ruling that the Postal Service could deliver abortion drugs to states with bans without violating the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that prohibits the mailing of materials used in abortions. Opponents of abortion have expressed interest in seeing a strict interpretation of that law applied.
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trump
Trump does not have a clear position on mifepristone.
He appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose ruling last year struck down the FDA’s approval of the drug. An appeals court panel made up mostly of Trump appointees allowed mifepristone to remain on the market but upheld other parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that made the drug harder to obtain.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests to comment on the Supreme Court’s June ruling or to say whether it would support revoking the FDA’s approval of abortion drugs.
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Money and abortion
Biden
Opponents of abortion have long sought ways to deprive organizations (both in the United States and around the world) that provide abortion services or refer patients to other services, especially through “gag laws.” ” that block foreign aid or funding for Title X, a federal grant program that supports family planning for low-income Americans.
Since the 1980s, every Republican president has enacted versions of the global rule blocking certain foreign aid, called the Mexico City policy, which Democrats later repeal.
Biden revoked both the global and domestic rules that Trump enacted.
In 2019, Biden said he opposed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicaid from funding abortions in most cases. That was a change in her long-standing stance on the matter, but it hasn’t done much to ensure its repeal.
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trump
When he took office in 2017, Trump reset the Mexico City policy.
Republican presidents have done this consistently, but Trump went further: He expanded the policy to prevent organizations from receiving not only family planning funds but also broader health aid, including money for clean water, nutrition programs and prevention of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
He also imposed similar restrictions on Title X funding for national organizations for the first time since the Reagan administration.
Trump supported an unsuccessful Senate attempt to make the Hyde Amendment permanent.
