'What Happens Under a National Ban?' and Other Post-2024 Questions

Abortion, Every Day answers your questions

Over the last few days, Abortion, Every Day has gotten a lot of questions about what abortion access and attacks will look like under the new administration. I’ll be collecting the most frequently asked questions and answering as many as I can in the coming weeks here. (I’ll update this page as I go, so consider bookmarking it.)

If you have a question that hasn’t been answered, leave it here. You may also find what you’re looking for in AED’s past coverage, so consider looking there first. The below piece about what a Trump presidency would mean for abortion rights, for example, is a good place to start:

What a Trump Presidency Would Do to Abortion Rights

If you need specific medical or legal advice, please check out AED’s ‘resources’ section for trusted organizations you can be in touch with.

I also want to make something clear before I start: The laws didn’t change overnight. Whatever access to abortion you had on Monday, you still have today (for better or worse). The Trump administration won’t take power until January, so they can’t implement changes until then at the earliest. And I’ll be sure to keep you all updated when anything happens.

I know this is a very scary moment, truly. But if we want to help ourselves and each other, it’s important to share accurate information and to not fall prey to conservative scare tactics. They want us to be too afraid to seek care and help each other—we can’t let that happen.

So let’s get into some of your questions, click to skip ahead:

Do national bans override state ballot measures?

Will Republicans pass a national ban?

What happens if / when a national ban is enacted?

Will abortion pills be banned?

Will birth control be banned?

Will abortion patients be arrested?

How do I get abortion medication? Is it safe?

Questions to come

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Would a national ban override my state’s pro-choice ballot measure / constitutional protection?

Unfortunately, yes. Federal law trumps state law, and those pro-choice ballot measure wins don’t mean much if Republicans are able to pass a national ban.

Will Republicans pass a national ban?

Trump has said he would veto a federal ban—but we have no reason to trust anything he says. My prediction is that if Republicans would try to pass a ban if they had the votes, but they would call it something else. (Like a ‘minimum national standard’ or ‘personhood protection’.) By claiming that the law isn’t a ban, the GOP would give Trump the deniability he needs to let it go through without a veto.

But for right now, we’re still waiting to see the outcome of all the House races.

What happens if / when a national ban is enacted?

If Republicans are able to pass a national abortion ban, every state in the country would be beholden to that law. A federal ban wouldn’t necessarily be a total ban; the GOP has introduced legislation in the past, for example, that would prohibit abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But Republicans have also tried to pass fetal personhood laws that could ban abortion at fertilization. So it’s unclear what kind of ban they would try to push for. We’ll know more about what they plan to do in the coming months, and I’ll keep you posted.

Because so many states have already banned abortion, we have some sense of what a national ban would be like—just look to states like Texas and Idaho, where people have been living it since Roe was overturned. The biggest difference would be that under a national ban, patients from anti-abortion states wouldn’t necessarily have the ability to travel to a pro-choice state for abortion care because we’d all be under some kind of ban.

But again, we’re not there yet.

Will abortion pills be banned?

The fate of abortion medication is primarily tied to three things: 1) Republicans’ ability to pass a national ban 2) the Trump administration’s enforcement of the Comstock Act and 3) what the new head of the FDA decides to do.

Since we already talked about a national ban, let’s start with Comstock—because that really is the most immediate danger to abortion medication and abortion access more broadly.

Comstock is a 150-year old obscenity law that bans the mailing of abortion medication, tools used in abortion, and possibly birth control that Republicans claim are actually abortifacients. (More on this in the next section.) Since 63% of abortions are done using abortion medication, these attacks on the pills would amount to a national backdoor ban impacting the entire country, not just anti-abortion states.

A Trump White House could enforce Comstock without a national abortion ban.

The new administration could also seriously limit or ban abortion medication—even without a national ban—by replacing the head of the FDA and having them repeal approval of the pills. Anti-abortion groups have been suing for some time to make that happen.

If you need abortion medication now or want to have pills on hand for the future, contact: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A. Please don’t stockpile medication, and know that people in anti-abortion states and those who are seeking an abortion right now will have priority.

Will birth control be banned?

While Republicans are sure to attack birth control, I don’t believe we’ll see an outright ban anytime soon. Anti-abortion lawmakers know that Americans would lose their collective shit if they tried to ban contraception all at once, so instead they’ll take a slow chipping away approach. (I wrote about this in my book and here at the newsletter in my series on birth control.)

Here’s a few things I expect to see:

• Access eroded for teenagers, especially around hormonal birth control—which Republicans will say are dangerous to girls’ and young women’s development;

• ‘Conscience clause’ laws expanded so that employers, pharmacists, insurers and more don’t have to cover or dispense contraception;

• State programs for affordable birth control cut entirely or amended to exclude emergency contraception and IUDs, which Republicans will say are abortifacients;

• Republicans further codifying the lie that certain kinds of contraception are actually abortions;

• Title X and other birth control funding rerouted to religious anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, which refuse to dispense birth control—or even talk about it outside of its supposed dangers.

In other words, the attacks on contraception will be largely hidden and rolled out slowly. That’s why it’s so vital that we’re paying close attention.

Will abortion patients be arrested?

Most anti-abortion lawmakers claim that they won’t prosecute patients—and write their laws to say as much. But as we’ve seen from pregnancy-related criminalizations both pre- and post-Dobbs, those promises haven’t stopped women from being arrested and prosecuted. They just target patients using different laws and say the cases have nothing to do with abortion.

I suspect that under a Trump presidency, we’ll see the same kind of criminalization that we’ve always seen: the targeting of marginalized groups; charges that are seemingly unrelated to abortion (‘abuse of a corpse,’ ‘practicing medicine without a license’, etc); and using media to villainize women in an effort to preemptively push back on public outrage.

The people at most legal risk, though, will continue to be abortion providers and those who help patients to get care (i.e., abortion funds & activists). We know that anti-abortion groups are extremely eager to prosecute doctors who’ve been shipping abortion medication, and the groups that help women leave their anti-abortion state for care. In other words, they’re targeting the helpers.

And that’s the most important thing to know: Republicans are counting on our fear of arrest to not seek out care, and to not help each other. A tremendous part of their strategy isn’t criminalization itself–but the fear of criminalization.

For information on criminalization, go to Pregnancy Justice. For free legal help as a patient or health practitioner, call If/When/How’s free Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812

How do I get abortion medication? Is it safe?

If you don’t already have abortion medication in your medicine cabinet, you should absolutely order some. You do not need to be pregnant to get the pills—you can order advance provision medication just in case you or someone you know needs it down the line.

In fact, I’d argue that it’s a great way to protect yourself and your community. After all, conservatives' top priority is going after abortion medication; they know that many women in states with bans are ending their pregnancies in spite of the law by getting pills shipped from doctors in pro-choice states. They also know that 63% of abortions in the U.S. are done using the medication. In other words, limiting access to the pills would impact the majority of abortions.

That’s why Republicans are expected to use the Comstock Act to ban the shipping of abortion medication. (The 150-year old obscenity law could also be used to stop the mailing of birth control, tools used in abortion, and anything else Republicans deem ‘obscene’; more on that in another post soon.) If the Trump administration does that, it won’t just impact states with bans—but the entire country.

By ordering advance provision medication, you can at least know that you’ll have the medication on hand for as long as their shelf life lasts. This isn’t just about protecting your own health, but throwing a wrench in anti-abortion strategy. As you know, conservatives want to implement tracking and data systems for these pills and abortion in general. The more abortion medication we have out in the world, available to us and the people we care about, the harder it will be for them to track.

But here’s the important part: It’s vital that we’re not stockpiling or hoarding the medication. Think about this as a community act; be prepared to give the pills to someone who needs them.

We should be real about criminalization. While we haven’t seen cases where someone was targeted for having pills mailed to them, there have been charges brought against women suspected of using the medication. It’s also clear that Republican AGs are itching to go after abortion funds and any ‘helpers’ who are supporting patients to get care.

So if you have questions or concerns about your legal risk, you can call If/When/How’s free Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812. I have more information about advance provision in this TikTok I did a while back, and I’ll be updating that account with another video on abortion medication tomorrow.

Trusted sources for abortion medication: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A.

Questions to come

Come back here in the coming days for answers to more questions. What I’ll be answering next: Do I need to delete my period tracking app? How do I prepare my friends without peddling in scare tactics? What kind of timeline are these attacks on?

In the meantime, for information on how to order abortion medication, support (or get support from) an abortion fund, or protect your digital privacy, read the piece below:

Five Things You Can Do Right Now

And for a deep dive into the attacks on abortion rights and what we can expect under the new administration, consider buying my new book, Abortion, which published just a few weeks ago. AED’s resource section has other books to check out, as well.