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Press Release
Reproductive Freedom for All Responds to Anti-Abortion DOJ Nominees Final Confirmation
For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 3, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
Reproductive Freedom for All Responds to Anti-Abortion DOJ Nominees Final Confirmation
Washington, DC — Harmeet Dhillon, nominee for U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Dean John Sauer, nominee for U.S. Solicitor General, and Aaron Reitz, nominee for Director of the Office of Legal Policy, have now all been confirmed to the Department of Justice (DOJ). These DOJ positions help determine how critical statutes, including those affecting reproductive freedom and abortion access, are interpreted and enforced. Their confirmations further cement the clear pattern of Trump filling his administration with anti-abortion extremists—loyalists who will enact his out-of-touch policies.
Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju released the following statement:
“Trump and AG Bondi are stacking the DOJ with the loyalists they need to execute a full-blown attack on our rights and freedoms. These anti-abortion extremists were selected because of their loyalty to the MAGA agenda and hostility toward reproductive freedom. They will not hesitate to carry out Trump’s anti-abortion agenda, and countless Americans will suffer as a result.”
Harmeet Dhillon, nominee for U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, is a self-proclaimed anti-abortion advocate, and one of the many laws that the Civil Rights Division enforces is the FACE Act. This is especially alarming as she has referred to herself as a “lawyer for the pro-life movement,” has called the right to abortion access a “fake federal right,” claimed that abortion is “fundamentally different” compared to other fundamental rights, and repeatedly represented an anti-abortion organization in a series of lawsuits in which federal courts regularly sided against them.
As solicitor general, John Sauer is responsible for overseeing and conducting litigation at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government. Throughout his career, he has spearheaded litigation, partnered with anti-abortion organizations, and given substantial funds to organizations that oppose access to abortion and contraception.
As lead of the Office of Legal Policy, Aaron Reitz is responsible for reviewing and coordinating DOJ regulations, as well as assisting the Attorney General in working with the White House and Senate on nominating and confirming judicial nominees. Reitz has identified being “pro-life” as one of the “areas of public policy” that he is “personally passionate about,”—and his professional record backs it. He described his work as deputy attorney general to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to undermine abortion access as work that “protected precious unborn children by defending Texas’s pro-life laws.”
Project 2025 and anti-abortion advocates have called on Trump’s DOJ to use its power to undermine reproductive freedom through numerous avenues—some of which are already underway—and include:
- Using litigation efforts to restrict access to medication abortion and emergency abortion care;
- Ceasing to investigate and prosecute violations of federal laws aimed at protecting reproductive freedom, including the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), which has protected abortion providers against anti-abortion violence and harassment for over thirty years;
- Misinterpreting and misusing the Comstock Act to ban medication abortion, and potentially all abortion care, nationwide;
- Refusing to acknowledge the well-established constitutional right to travel to access care; and
- Allowing the DOJ to become an instrument to monitor, track, and punish people for pregnancy outcomes and to collaborate with anti-abortion states in their efforts to punish people for accessing, providing, funding, or otherwise helping facilitate care.
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For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.