Trump's Anti-Trans Order Could Pave Way for National Abortion Ban

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have insisted that the White House would not sign a nationwide abortion ban—despite the latter's expression of support for one as recently as 2022—but an unrelated executive order Trump signed this week may put the country on the path to outlawing abortion care without the president needing to sign any legislation into law.

Reproductive rights advocates including author Jessica Valenti noticed shortly after Trump signed an executive order stating the government will not recognize transgender people that the document included language that was unmistakably linked to the right-wing push for "fetal personhood" laws.

"'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell," reads the executive order signed on Monday. "'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."

Aside from the fact that the order suggests the Trump administration will recognize everyone born in the United States as a female—because in the first weeks after conception, explained one 2001 scientific paper, "fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female"—the document claims that a fetus is a "person" from the moment of conception.

"And so it begins," said Valenti after the executive order was issued. "They are going to try to sneak in that fetal personhood language anywhere they can, anywhere and everywhere."

The order's language is in line with the Republican Party's 2024 platform, which did not call for a nationwide abortion ban but expressed support for states that would establish fetal personhood by extending the protections of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that "no person can be denied life or liberty without due process," to fetuses.

The Texas Republican Party last year asserted in its platform that "abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide," and said the party would push to extend "equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization."

Rights advocates have warned that adoption of the fetal personhood doctrine at the national level could ultimately lead to the prosecution of pregnant people who obtain abortion care—something anti-abortion groups have long claimed they wouldn't support.

When the national GOP platform was released last August, Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern said its language suggested that "the GOP has recognized that this task is too unpopular to enact democratically, so they're outsourcing it to the federal courts."

"Fetal personhood means a nationwide abortion ban imposed by judicial fiat," said Stern.

Anti-abortion advocates aim to ultimately bring fetal personhood to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping the right-wing majority would rule that the 14th Amendment applies to fetuses from the moment of conception.

Including a reference to fetal personhood in an unrelated executive order is "an intentional way to continue to normalize the idea that embryos are people," Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, told The Guardian.

"This is yet another attempt to codify it in one form or another," said Sussman.