'Roe' Would Have Turned 52 Today. Instead, ‘Abortion’ Search Results Have Been Scrubbed From Federal Website.
Today, January 22, 2025, Roe v. Wade would have turned 52. The landmark Supreme Court case established a federal right to abortion. It certainly didn’t fix everything, but as the gruesome and infuriating stories that have arisen almost daily over the last 2.5 years show us, a federal right to abortion absolutely mattered.
Thanks to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in 2022, it’s gone. Also gone are the majority of search results for "abortion" on the official Health and Human Services Department's website, now that Donald Trump's returned to the White House, NPR reports. This comes after reproductiverights.gov, a basic know-your-rights fact sheet that the Biden administration created after Dobbs, went dark within hours of Trump taking office.
Per NPR, in lieu of any medical information about abortion, or accessing abortion, or our rights around seeking abortion, you’ll only find search results from Trump’s first term. The 166 remaining results concern insurers and employers who were supposedly persecuted by requirements to cover or offer information about abortion and who had their “rights” restored under the Trump administration—specifically, their right to discriminate against employees seeking care.
On Tuesday, I wrote that removing information from federal websites may seem like a relatively small step—especially when the Trump administration is expected to attack our rights in so many other awful ways. But information about our reproductive rights, and having a reliable place to turn to in a purposefully, wildly confusing legal landscape, are incredibly important. (Find our fact sheet here.) For the Trump administration to act so quickly to take that away is chilling.
This scrubbing of abortion information from federal websites feels deeply connected to a key feature of the right’s broader strategy on abortion: gaslighting. In September, a former Trump adviser and Project 2025 staffer claimed that the verified stories of women suffering, almost dying, and bleeding out in hospital parking lots as a result of abortion bans were made up. I interviewed one woman who told me that this—denial of her own lived experience, which she documented in a series of videos—is a regular occurrence.
“I had done so much work to get my story out there and they always say ‘fake news,’ no matter the evidence I bring, including my book with photo evidence,” Carmen Broesder told Jezebel. “It’s tough to constantly face disbelief, especially from those in power or who have platforms to influence others.”
In the years before Dobbs, GOP politicians frequently assured us they and their Supreme Court picks respected Roe, and that women who raised concerns were being “hysterical.” In 2018, about 60% of voters said they didn’t think it likely the Supreme Court would really kill Roe. And in 2024, when Donald Trump pledged he wouldn’t further restrict abortion, it seems enough voters—even voters who voted for abortion rights ballot measures in some states—believed him.
As I wrote in June to mark the second anniversary of Dobbs, it will take years to fully understand the fallout and human toll of abortion bans. Until then, we’ll be told that none of this is really happening.