HHS Rolls Back Biden-Era Policies on Abortion, Health Providers

The Trump administration is rescinding civil rights guidance for health providers on abortion, calling the previous policy positions out of step with current federal priorities.

The US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights on Friday announced its ending of Biden administration efforts to ease access to abortion services and medication. The documents largely grapple with the application of conscience protections of health workers and balancing the rights of health entities to provide or deny abortion services.

The notices come amid increasing attention on the Trump administration over abortion policy. Senate Republicans in January pushed for clarity around a long-awaited study from the Trump administration on the safety of abortion medication. State legislatures likewise appear poised to grapple with abortion this year.

Medication abortion featured in Tuesday’s rescission notices. Among the documents scaled back by the Trump administration was 2023 guidance on discrimination protections for access to medications at pharmacies. That 2023 document was a revision of previous Biden guidance embroiled in litigation and cut previous references to the abortion drug mifepristone.

While the 2023 guidance stated pharmacies don’t need to prescribe drugs for abortion purposes, the Trump OCR said it comes off as “litigation-minded boilerplate.”

“The 2023 Guidance could still be read to threaten pharmacists who refuse to fill certain other medications that may also be used for abortion,” according to the Federal Register notice issued by OCR director Paula M. Stannard.

Friday’s notice also said the “guidance can still be read as an effort to use taxpayer dollars to promote abortion and likely force pharmacists to participate in abortion even if doing so violated their convictions, which would be potentially against the law.”

A 2001 guidance document also was rescinded as it “narrowly focused on the rights of providers employed by certain federally funded health care entities who perform lawful abortions but failed to clarify the conscience rights of providers who are unwilling to perform abortion,” Stannard said in a separate notice.

Stannard also noted that the rescinded guidance leaned on court cases to illustrate that it’s unconstitutional for states to block patients from ending a pregnancy before fetal viability. That view, however, is “no longer accurate,” Stannard said, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “thereby allowing state legislatures to determine the legality of abortion.”

Also withdrawn was a Biden administration OCR letter to the University of Vermont Medical Center over its handling of an abortion.