As part of the new Trump administration’s purge of new information it would rather people not have access to, reproductiverights.gov has been taken offline for the first time spotted by CBS News.
The site was launched by the Biden administration in 2022 after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn it Roe v. Wadeoverturning federal protections that gave people the right to access abortion. The site, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, offered information about abortion rights, informing people about the type of care available to them and how to advocate for access to that care. It also offered information on a range of other sexual and reproductive health services, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, antenatal care and HIV screening. While an archived version of the page is available through the Internet Archive, the information is no longer on a dedicated federal domain.
With overturning Roe deerlaws regarding abortion care are left up to the states—meaning that access varies greatly depending on where a person lives. According to the Guttmacher Institute41 states have some restrictions on access to abortion, including 12 that have outright bans on health care services. Access may vary depending on how many people are in the gestational process, and exceptions may or may not be available.
This is exactly the kind of situation where you’d want a regularly updated database that provides easy-to-navigate and easy-to-understand care options maintained by experts. Of course, that’s gone now.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. During his first term, Trump led a similar purge of science-based information posted on government websites, focused primarily on climate change information. During his first day in office in 2017, he deleted all mentions of climate change from whitehouse.gov, removed pages related to climate change from the websites of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy, and actually tried to bury any suggestion that climate change is happening or will have an impact on humans. Fortunately, if you ignore it, it will be easy leave…right?
Either way, the reality is that reproductiverights.gov and other federal sites are falling as a virtue of the Trump administration. It is not the website that dictates the reality of reproductive rights, and there are many third parties such as Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rightsand Guttmacher Institute which provide useful information for those seeking abortion care. Heck, you can still find information about abortion rights on government websites thanks to people like Congressman Dan Goldman of New Yorkwhich maintains a list of resources for its constituents.
But the decision to take down the site on day one shows where this administration’s priorities lie. White House pages in Spanish accidentally came down yesterdayalso, as he did sites related to LGBTQ rights. If you want to know who’s in the crosshairs, just look at who’s access to information has been cut off.