Republican lawmakers aren’t waiting for the next Trump administration to begin chipping away at Biden-era protections for reproductive rights. As they allocate next year’s funding to federal agencies, hard-right legislators on the House Appropriations Committee are taking cues from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025 , as well as the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lawyers helped draft the anti- abortion law the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v. Wade .
Politicians often attempt to use must-pass budget bills to push through unrelated, ideological provisions they know the average person will never hear about, because the bills are necessary to keep the government open. Riders and cuts in the Republicans’ budget this year seek to block funding to enforce President Joe Biden ’s executive order protecting emergency medical treatment for pregnant women, funding for hospitals that provide abortion training, and funding to implement abortion-related provisions of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Republicans on the committee “have hijacked the debate over government funding by tucking policy riders into spending bills that harm women, restrict abortion, and make women’s health care inaccessible,” Rep.
Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the Appropriations committee, said in a statement to Rolling Stone . “The policy riders and funding cuts in their bill completely abandon women.
