Trump campaign insiders also discussed these ideas, according to a person with direct knowledge of the meetings.
Legal experts say the proposed change could make it much harder for people in states that ban abortion to travel out of state to get an abortion. Data from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, shows that out-of-state travel for abortions has doubled from the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2023.
More than 170,000 patients traveled across state lines to seek abortions in 2023, according to the institute’s data.
The Heritage Foundation, which has been heavily involved in policy proposals for President Trump’s second term, recommended that the Department of Labor and Congress “make it clear” that federal labor regulations on employer-sponsored health insurance plans “must not override states’ ability to protect innocent human lives, including unborn children.”
Another proposal being considered by Trump’s labor advisers is a new Federal rules taking effect this month will require most U.S. employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to employees related to pregnancy or childbirth, including leave for an abortion, according to a person with direct knowledge of labor policy discussions among Trump’s advisers.
Caroline Leavitt, a national spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Trump “has long and consistently supported states’ rights to make decisions regarding abortion” and that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party “are fundamentally out of step with the majority of Americans in their support for abortion.”
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The proposal has emerged among Trump’s abortion opponents as the former president seeks to minimize voter backlash over abortion restrictions and explores his position on abortion amid a tight election race with President Biden.
Trump’s position on reproductive rights has proven difficult to clearly define. In April, he released a video saying that abortion should be left to the states. Then, in a late May interview with a Pittsburgh TV station, he suggested that states should be able to restrict access to contraception. But later that same day, Trump posted to Truth Social that he would “never support imposing restrictions on contraception.”
Data is hard to come by, but thousands of women travel out of state to get abortions and likely use private employer insurance to do so, said Liz McCamman Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group that supports abortion rights.
Forcing private employer insurance to exclude abortion coverage “will have a profound impact on women,” McCaman-Taylor added, saying it would have a “chilling effect” on women who seek abortions even if they don’t have employer-sponsored health insurance.
“These changes are making people very scared because the reality is they could end up in jail, they could lose their freedom and they could not come home to their children at night,” McCamman Taylor said.
About half of companies with more than 200 employees cover some abortion services in their health insurance plans, according to a 2023 survey of businesses by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research institute.
Even if Trump wins in November, there’s no guarantee that policymakers will follow through on these plans. Conservative groups with ties to the former president are deeply divided on abortion, with some groups viewing further restricting abortion access as a losing battle, while the religious right within Trump’s sphere of influence wants to further restrict abortion access. How tough a second Trump administration will be on abortion access will depend on who he picks for key leadership roles, conservative policymakers say.
Several Republican policy advisers downplayed the likelihood of the Trump Labor Department taking the step, saying the campaign was wary of adopting additional policies that could stoke a backlash over the job losses. Roe v. Wade.
In response to a request for comment, the Trump campaign dismissed proposals to limit health insurance coverage and end workplace abortion access, and pointed The Washington Post to previous statements from advisers Suzie Wiles and Chris LaCivita that said the news organization “continues to be very active in using anonymous sources and speculation about a second Trump Administration in an effort to thwart a second Trump Administration.”
Wiles and LaCivita added that “no aspect of future presidential appointments or policy announcements should be considered official unless they are issued by Mr. Trump or an authorized member of his campaign.”
Jonathan Berry, author of the Heritage Foundation’s federal labor reform bill and former undersecretary of labor under the Trump administration, is widely seen as one of Trump’s top advisers on labor issues and a possible candidate for a senior Labor Department position under the Trump administration, according to two conservative policy experts.
Proposals to restrict employer access to abortion are implemented through the Department of Labor through the law that regulates private employer-sponsored health insurance for Americans, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). For the millions of people who have private employer-sponsored health insurance, ERISA allows employers to enact uniform health insurance plans across the states in which their employees live.
Brendan Maher, a law professor at Texas A&M University who has studied ERISA, said changing federal law to exclude abortion-related benefits under ERISA “would significantly restrict access to abortion in the United States.”
Not all private employer-sponsored insurance covers abortion, but ERISA rules allow employers to do so in every state they have employees in. Experts say current ERISA doctrine protects companies from lawsuits, allowing them to offer abortion benefits in states that ban abortion coverage or that prohibit “assisted” abortion.
Since the news broke in 2022 Roe v. Wade In preparation for the possibility that the bill will be overturned, several major employers, including Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Disney, Microsoft, Starbucks and Tesla, have announced that they will subsidize travel expenses for employees in states that restrict abortion access to access abortions elsewhere.
The question of how the Trump Department of Labor could amend the law to exclude abortion is highly complex and not entirely clear, legal experts said.
Maher noted that while the Department of Labor has moved to clarify ERISA to exclude abortion benefits, such a move would likely be struck down by the courts because ERISA has “broad, preemptive effects on the states.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s advisers are considering rolling back a federal rule that takes effect this month from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency that enforces civil rights laws regarding workplace discrimination, that requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to employees who want to have an abortion.
The new rules guide the implementation of the Pregnancy Worker Fairness Act, a bipartisan civilian piece of legislation passed in 2022. The rules clarify that as part of new accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related circumstances, employers must provide unpaid leave for workers to obtain an abortion.
Ending these accommodations is a “critical priority” for religious groups, said Rachel N. Morrison, a lawyer at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and a former adviser to a Trump appointee at the EEOC. “Ultimately, this rule will have adverse effects on pregnant women and their unborn children in the workplace.”
Rescinding the rule “would be a huge problem for everyone who doesn’t work for one of the great, generous companies that decides to announce it later.” Dobbs Reproductive rights lawyer McCaman Taylor said she would have given people paid or unpaid time off to get an abortion, pointing to a 2022 lawsuit that overturned an abortion ban. egg.
“These rules are for them, and they are probably the people who need it most,” she said.
Legal experts say if the EEOC were to repeal the rule under the Trump administration, it would likely face a drawn-out process: To implement any changes, the agency would have to wait for a Republican majority on the five-member commission, which could take years.
The rule could also be struck down in federal court after a coalition of 17 states with Republican attorneys general sued the agency in April, arguing that the rule allows the federal government to expand its power.
