Pennsylvania ACLU prepares to defend reproductive rights in a second Trump term

Abortion access continues to remain legal in Pennsylvania even though Donald Trump won the election. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are preparing to defend reproductive rights in a second Trump term. 

With a second Donald Trump presidency on the horizon, organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union are gearing up to defend reproductive rights for millions of Americans across Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. 

Vic Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, explained in a recent interview with The Keystone that reproductive rights in Pennsylvania are relatively stable barring a national abortion ban passed by Republicans. 

“Pennsylvania is in a relatively good place,” Walczak said. 

“While there is no clear Pennsylvania Supreme Court law outlining abortion as a constitutionally protected right, [abortion] is not imperiled right now simply because of the political makeup of the state. You’ve got a governor, you’ve got at least one house in the general assembly that is largely protective of women’s reproductive healthcare.”

Throughout the past year, Democrats raised concerns about Project 2025, a 920-page document from the Heritage Foundation that was written by right-wing organizations and over 100 former Trump administration staffers, and how it would restrict abortion access. 

Project 2025 potentially seeks to restrict abortion access federally by using the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law that bans sending lewd materials through the mail, in order to crack down on mailing abortion medication or materials to patients or medical officers. 

It also aims to restrict access to mifepristone, the country’s most popular abortion medication, by rescinding its approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Nationally, the ACLU released the Trump Memos earlier this year detailing their legal response if Trump was to go through with any of Project 2025’s proposals. 

The organization is promising to take the Trump organization to court if they try to ban abortion through the Comstock Act or rescind mifepristone’s approval status from the FDA. 

“Our prior litigation, based on robust scientific research and leading medical authorities, contributed to the removal of unlawful and medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, including a restriction that forced people to travel — sometimes hundreds of miles — simply to pick up the medication,” the ACLU’s memo stated. 

Walczak seemed cautiously optimistic about a second Trump administration having trouble advancing their agenda because of the missteps from Trump’s first administration.  

“I’m a little reluctant to try to predict what the Trump administration is going to do,” Walczak said. 

“We lived through Trump administration one. They made a lot of promises and pledges, many of which they did not manage to keep. Oftentimes they were pretty clumsy in trying to advance their agenda and either it didn’t work or we or others were able to block much of what they wanted to do in the court.”