The Trump Administration Says IUDs and the Pill Are Abortions by Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung, Sep 12, 2025, Abortion, everyday.
The White House Says Birth Control is Abortion
Today, the Trump administration told The New York Times that IUDs, hormonal implants, and the Pill are actually abortions. We’ve been waiting for this to happen.
For years, Abortion, Every Day warned that Republicans would try to ban birth control by twisting language—redefining certain contraceptives as ‘abortifacients’. It’s their best bet at staving off voter outrage: pretending that they’re opposing abortion, not birth control.
Up until recently, conservative lawmakers and activists did this behind-the-scenes—slipping the fake definition into a lawsuit here, a policy there. But they’ve been getting bolder since Trump took office. And today, they stopped pretending:
In a statement to The New York Times about the administration’s plan to destroy $10 million in birth control meant for women abroad, U.S.A.I.D. offered this statement:
“President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world. The administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.”
That’s right, abortifacient birth control. (To be clear: Abortions end a pregnancy, birth control prevents one—abortifacient birth control is not a thing.)
So what kind of birth control does the Trump administration consider abortion? Well, the contraception awaiting incineration includes IUDs, birth control pills, and hormonal implants.
There’s no overstating how important this is. A Trump administration official just said, on the record, that the president believes some of the most common forms of birth control are abortions. Think about what that means: does the White House believe those types of contraception are illegal in states with abortion bans? Or that they should be?
This wasn’t a mistake, an error, or a misunderstanding about what kinds of drugs are being held in this warehouse: U.S.A.I.D. is currently being run by anti-abortion extremist Russ Vought, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Vought was a key contributor to Project 2025, the policy director of the GOP platform writing committee, and a guy Students for Life has called, “Trump’s most pro-life cabinet member.”
So yeah, they want to ban birth control.
The term used in the U.S.A.I.D. statement—”abortifacient birth control”—is also telling. I first flagged the term abortifacient contraceptives back in 2023, when it showed up in a lawsuit brought by an Oregon anti-abortion group that didn’t want to cover employees’ birth control. Just last year, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a near-identical suit in Washington, again claiming IUDs and emergency contraception were abortions.
This isn’t some theoretical strategy; it’s already shaping policy. In 2023, for example, Indiana lawmakers tried to pass a bipartisan bill to increase contraception access—but after being lobbied by local anti-abortion activists, Republicans stripped all language referring to IUDs, claiming they were abortifacients. Republican Rep. Cindy Ledbetter said the bill was changed because “we are a strong pro-life state.”
that loves to use guns to kill kids in schools!
This is exactly why language is so important, and why we’ve been so dogged about tracking anti-abortion strategy—they truly think no one will notice what they’re up to. And if mainstream outlets don’t catch on, they just might be right.
I know political news is moving quickly right now, but this deserves front-page attention: the Trump administration has officially said it believes birth control is abortion. Surely that should set off a few alarms!
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