What to expect from Trump 2.0: The anti-rights brigade are now in power

With Trump 2.0, the US enters a new era – one where people’s rights, particularly those of women and girls, LGBTQIA+ people, Black or brown people, or immigrants, are ignored, or worse, violated. Climate change is not a concern. Disinformation is rampant. Reproductive freedom, particularly the access to abortion, is radically curtailed, despite broad voter support.

Most of us are familiar with (and frankly, are already experiencing) the Project 2025 playbook, which calls for dismantling democratic norms in the US, unitary executive power, harsh Christian nationalism, a punitive approach to foreign assistance and multilateralism, and violations of human rights. We're hurtling into a dark period. Get out your flashlights.

During Trump’s first term, we saw his extreme, anti-democratic, anti-abortion ideology in action. He stacked the courts with far-right judges, particularly the Supreme Court, which paved the way for overturning Roe v. Wade. With that decision, the Court set the US back nearly half a century, and the effects rippled across the globe.

In 2022, for example, the Kenyan courts halted momentum to protect abortion rights, citing Roe’s weakened precedent. My colleagues in Ethiopia saw anti-abortion activists, emboldened by the fall of Roe, spark a public outcry against the 2005 liberalized abortion law. Similarly, in India, groups protested in the streets of Delhi, calling for the 1971 law allowing abortion to be repealed. And in Nigeria, the governor of the state of Lagos revoked policy guidance about abortion care for life-threatening health conditions.

The evidence is clear, and I have seen in my work with Ipas, a global reproductive justice organisation, when abortion is legally restricted, when care is denied or delayed, it’s both a public health and human rights concern. A simple, safe medical procedure becomes risky. Thirty-five million unsafe abortions happen each year and tens of thousands of women die or are gravely injured. According to the World Health Organisation, the proportion of unsafe abortions is higher in countries with severe restrictions than those with less restrictive laws.

Let’s be clear, when abortion is criminalised, people live in fear and confusion about the law and care is driven underground, pregnant people and providers go to jail, and many individuals are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term against their will. Everyone is less free. We see it in Texas, and we see it overseas. When you look at the case of Josseli Barnica in Texas, who died because she was denied an emergency, lifesaving abortion, it is remarkably like that of Beatriz, whose pregnancy threatened her health and life, in El Salvador. I note, however, that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognised in December that abortion is a human right, and the government of El Salvador violated Beatriz’s rights by denying her an abortion.

Yet, with Trump’s cabinet picks, he has doubled down on a global anti-reproductive rights agenda. Elise Stefanik will presumably be ambassador to the United Nations, an institution she has harshly criticised. Pam Bondi, nominee for Attorney General, has defended Florida’s anti-abortion law and the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Russ Vought, a Project 2025 co-author, would shape federal funding as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Marco Rubio is a vocal supporter of the Global Gag Rule and would bring his anti-rights ideology to bear as Secretary of State. Dr. David Weldon, whose record is staunchly anti-abortion, would be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control, which under Project 2025 would expand abortion surveillance. And this is a short list of anti-rights ideologues who would be in power.

When abortion is criminalised, everyone is less free. We see it in Texas, and we see it overseas.

All signs point to a continued rise in global nationalism, and I’m sure we’ll see far more extreme ideologies flourish in the US and abroad as Trump and autocratic leaders – or wannabes – mimic each other’s anti-rights rhetoric and policies.

Trump and his cronies have made promises they intend to keep. They will authorise deep reductions in US foreign assistance, defunding the World Health Organisation, and quickly reinstating and expanding harmful policies like the Global Gag Rule (GGR), which restricts foreign organisations that receive US funds from using their own private funds or other donor funding to inform, educate or provide abortion services.

Under the first Trump administration the Global Gag Rule was in direct conflict with the “national law in approximately 37 countries that received US global health assistance where abortion laws were more liberal than the exceptions to the GGR, such as “to preserve a woman’s physical health.”

It is expected that under Trump 2.0, the GGR will also be applied to multilateral organisations, foreign governments, and US-based NGOs. This would be the most significant expansion of the GGR since it was enacted 40 years ago during the Reagan administration.

The expanded GGR will also compound the harms of the Helms Amendment, a 51-year-old US foreign policy that restricts the use of US foreign assistance to pay for abortion “as a method of family planning,” but is applied as a total ban on abortion services and information with US funds. The Helms Amendment has prevented millions of people from accessing abortion services, even in countries where it is legal.

As he imposes his Project 2025 Agenda, he’ll revive anti-gender human rights policy frameworks like the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights and the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), which was advanced by his former Health and Human Services official, Valerie Huber, who is now leading the anti-rights movement abroad through Protego, operationalising the GCD.

While the US blocks foreign governments from providing abortion care, even in countries where it is legal, thus restricting their sovereignty, there is progressive and positive change in the world. In the last 30 years, more than 60 countries have changed their abortion laws, nearly all to expand access and reduce maternal mortality. There is evidence of the tremendous benefits to individuals, families, communities and countries when abortion is accessible, legal and affordable. And those things play a huge role in tackling some big global issues – teen pregnancy and child marriage, school retention, and economic livelihood.

While we wait to see how extensive the damage will be from Trump 2.0, we must remember that over the long arc of history, progress is occurring, lives have been saved and human rights upheld and honored.

We need not only shine a light on injustice but also on advocates, innovative ideas and organisations resisting and persisting for a better future where everyone can access essential reproductive health services, including abortion.