Under Trump, New Haven’s reproductive care is a federal target
The weakening of the FACE Act leaves abortion providers worried for the safety of their patients, practitioners and facilities.

Tim Tai
Last month, the Trump administration weakened an act protecting abortion clinics. The effects of this change may be felt in New Haven.
On Jan. 24, the Department of Justice released a memo directing federal prosecutors to limit enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act at the direction of the Trump administration. The FACE Act provided federal protection to abortion, reproductive health and pregnancy resource centers. Under the new directive, the FACE Act will be enforced “only in extraordinary circumstances” and otherwise left for state or local law to address. The day before, President Trump pardoned 10 defendants charged with violating the FACE Act after forming a blockade at a reproductive healthcare center in 2020.
“There’s a long history in our country of violent attacks on reproductive health care providers and abortion providers,” Gretchen Raffa, the chief policy and advocacy officer for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, said. “Everyone should have the ability to access healthcare, free from fear of intimidation, of harm, of violence. We absolutely condemn this violent act and this pardon of violent actors.”
A violent history
The FACE Act initially passed in 1994, in response to decades of increasing violence by anti-abortion extremists towards providers and patients of reproductive health services, culminating in the murder of the physician Dr. David Gunn in 1993 during a demonstration outside his clinic.
The law created federal jurisdiction for harming, threatening or interfering with individuals attempting to access reproductive health services, and for intentionally damaging reproductive health facilities. These jurisdictions apply to all facilities providing reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care.
“The agencies that should have been enforcing the new law often didn’t do so.” said Megann Licskai, who teaches History of Science and Medicine at Yale and is writing a book on North American anti-abortion movements. “Sometimes, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would just not investigate clinic fires.”
Though imperfect, The FACE Act still amounted to a significant decrease in the levels of violence directed towards abortion clinics. According to Licskai, at the time of its authorization in 1994, half of all clinics in the nation had reported experiencing one or more incidents of violence, while by 1999, less than one-quarter of clinics filed similar reports.
“This question of who is enforcing [the FACE Act] has always been a challenge. In states where law enforcement was less receptive to abortion, you have less enforcement, but I think we can still see a real impact,” Licskai said. “The FACE Act gives people a chance to be more proactive about protecting clinic spaces.”
Effects of limited enforcement
The memo released under President Trump calls the Biden administration’s application of the FACE Act a “prototypical example” of weaponization of the federal government. The memo states that nearly all prosecutions under the act have been disproportionately enforced against pro-life protesters.
The new directive instructs prosecutors to enforce the law only in cases presenting “significant aggravating factors,” or in instances when death, extreme bodily harm or significant property damage result.
“I think there’s going to be an increase in violence,” Génesis Luigi Bravo, a Ph.D. student at Yale specializing in work with sexual and reproductive health issues, said. “When they resign this act, what they are communicating is that this harassment is not serious enough.”
A reduction in the enforcement of the act limits the amount of protections that abortion clinics have against protesters. This reduction may have far-reaching consequences, across both red and blue states.
Licskai foreshadows further lack of access to reproductive health centers in pro-life states, resulting in pro-life protesters concentrating on the few abortion clinics left in red states, or moving on to target clinics in neighboring blue states.
“Many of the states that are the most hostile to abortion already have very few clinics or no clinics, and so if the state policy enforcers do not want to spend resources on that, they won’t, which is just going to make access that much more difficult,” said Licskai. “As fewer states offer abortion, we may see a kind of organized [pro-life] movement to fly in and bus in protestors to clinics in states where abortion is allowed.”
Concerns over the upcoming administration
Planned Parenthood of Southern New England raised additional concerns over the Trump administration’s shift towards anti-abortion sentiment and policy, especially regarding defunding abortion access. They are expecting the new administration to make attempts at decertifying Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider. Additionally, they expect the Trump administration to remove Planned Parenthood from the federal Title X family planning program, the only federal public health program providing free reproductive healthcare for low-income patients, which also occurred during his first administration.
According to Raffa, Planned Parenthood is working with politicians and advocates at the state level in order to strengthen Connecticut state laws to ensure access to abortion care, birth control, fertility and health care is legal and accessible for all.
“We are deeply concerned about their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers,” Raffa said. “These are things that we are watching and know are coming, and they’re coming quickly.”
The Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven is located on 345 Whitney Ave.