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Memos & Media Guidance
This Week, Republicans Showed Us Who They’re Really Working For: Anti-Abortion Extremists
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Reproductive Freedom for All
RE: This Week, Republicans Showed Us Who They’re Really Working For: Anti-Abortion Extremists
DATE: January 23, 2026
This Week, Republicans Showed Us Who They’re Really Working For: Anti-Abortion Extremists
Everyday Americans are grappling with skyrocketing health care costs, losing their insurance altogether, and deep economic uncertainty. Families and communities are being ripped apart by escalating authoritarian violence, and Trump continues to stoke chaos instead of governing.
Instead of making life better for the people who put them in office, Republican officials are prioritizing the demands of anti-abortion extremists—doubling down on an agenda the vast majority of Americans reject, ratcheting up attacks from Trump’s first term, and laying more groundwork for a national abortion ban nobody voted for.
Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju released the following statement:
“Republicans love to say they’re listening to voters, but their actions tell a different story. Over and over again, they’re choosing anti-abortion extremists and billionaire-funded groups like SBA Pro-Life America over the overwhelming majority of Americans who support legal abortion and want politicians out of their doctor’s offices. The question is simple: Do Republicans work for their constituents, or for the fringe groups bankrolling and threatening them? Because right now, Americans are paying the price while anti-abortion extremists call the shots.”
Trump and his allies pledged to “leave abortion to the states,” but their actions this week alone prove otherwise:
- Pandering to Anti-Abortion Groups: Yesterday, on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the administration announced several new and escalating attacks on reproductive freedom:
- Recycling baseless and politically motivated attacks against Planned Parenthood, aiming to push essential health care even further out of reach.
- Reinstating and expanding the Global Gag Rule, cutting off U.S. funding for health care—denying people access to essential reproductive, maternal, and gender-affirming care—and exporting Trump’s anti-freedom agenda around the world.
- Interfering in medical advancement by restricting scientific research, putting political ideology over science and threatening advances in treatment for serious diseases and pregnancy complications.
- Continuing Trump’s tour of retribution against blue states, targeting California and Illinois—critical abortion access points in the post-Dobbs landscape.
- A source inside the White House told POLITICO this isn’t the end of the administration’s anti-abortion efforts, noting that there is “more to come on this stuff.”
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- Later today, Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) will speak at anti-abortion groups’ annual “March for Life,” and Trump is expected to address attendees via video message. This is Vance’s second year in a row as the keynote speaker. By aligning themselves with this fringe event, Republican leaders are making clear that anti-abortion extremists—not the majority of Americans (8 in 10) who support legal abortion—are driving this administration’s priorities. Groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA) are no longer operating behind the scenes; they are openly dictating terms, pressuring lawmakers, and demanding ever-more extreme policies. This vocal minority’s close ties to the GOP and purchase with the highest levels of American government are front and center for all to see today.
- Advancing Performative Anti-Abortion Legislation: This week, House Republicans advanced multiple pieces of anti-abortion legislation. HR 6945, which aims to funnel more taxpayer dollars to anti-abortion centers, passed the House largely along party lines on Wednesday. HR 6359, which would further stigmatize abortion and shame students who are considering ending a pregnancy, also passed in the House along party lines yesterday and is expected to be pushed by Republicans in the Senate when they return next week. Both of these bills were already introduced and rejected two years ago in Congress, and Republicans know they do nothing to solve real problems or ease the suffering they’ve unleashed on communities across the country. Their purpose is political: to signal loyalty to anti-abortion donors and prove they are willing to escalate a failing agenda.
- Holding the ACA—and Millions of Families’ Health Care—Hostage: Insurance costs have already more than doubled for families across the country, and some have lost their insurance completely, after Republicans let ACA premium tax credits expire on January 1. The Senate could fix this immediately by backing the House-passed clean extension, but they took the week off after propagating lies about the Hyde Amendment and abortion under the ACA. As bipartisan negotiations stall, new reporting from POLITICO reveals how groups like SBA are escalating public pressure campaigns, threatening to withhold tens of millions in pledged midterm spending and back primary challenges to any Republican deemed “too soft” for refusing to push a nationwide abortion coverage ban. These groups have been explicit that they won’t accept anything short of a federal coverage ban—an unprecedented intrusion into the private market that would make care unaffordable or inaccessible for millions.
The bottom line is this: a vocal minority is using money and threats to impose a dangerous and unpopular agenda—and Trump and Republican lawmakers are complicit. Voters have made clear what they want. The only question left is whether Republicans will continue governing for anti-abortion extremists or finally start working for the people they were elected to serve. Democracy requires Congress to check Trump from abusing his power. If elected officials fail to do so, voters will make sure they answer for it in the 2026 midterms.
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For over 55 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.