**Trump Administration Ends Biden-Era Abortion Rule Likely Linked to Child Sex Trafficking**
*The Washington Stand* | October 27, 2025 | S. A. McCarthy
President Donald Trump and his administration are undoing a Biden-era immigration provision that would have facilitated abortions for children.
The Daily Signal reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is terminating rules and programs that violate the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal taxpayer dollars for abortions. This move includes ending a rule change from 2022 affecting the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a division of HHS responsible for unaccompanied children (UACs) encountered crossing the border.
The Biden administration had issued a requirement that ORR facilitate UACs with “access to medical care, including transportation across state lines and associated ancillary services if necessary to access appropriate medical services, including access to medical specialists, family planning services, and medical services requiring heightened ORR involvement.”
However, under Trump, the Justice Department’s (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluded that the Biden-era rule violated the Hyde Amendment, since it would have required federal taxpayer dollars to be used to transport children across state lines for abortions.
According to Trump’s OLC, the Biden administration’s HHS “took the view that it could use appropriated funds to provide transportation services for patients seeking an abortion even when Congress prohibited HHS from paying for the abortion itself.” The office argued that Biden’s OLC “took an unduly narrow view of the text” of the Hyde Amendment when approving the rule change.
“We therefore think it appropriate to withdraw that opinion, which we consider to be inconsistent with the traditional tools of statutory interpretation employed by the Supreme Court and this Office,” the Trump OLC wrote.
Biden’s OLC had relied on the original text of the Hyde Amendment, which barred federal funds from being “used to perform abortions,” to reason that paying to transport children across state lines for abortions was not the same as directly paying for the abortions themselves and was therefore legally permissible.
However, the Hyde Amendment was updated in 1993, stipulating that no federal funds “shall be expended for any abortion.” Trump’s OLC wrote that the Biden OLC’s 2022 opinion “considered of little relevance the earlier, 1993 change in the Hyde Amendment’s language from funds ‘used to perform abortions’ to funds ‘expended for any abortion.’”
The current OLC added, “Having reexamined the issue, we conclude that the Hyde Amendment is best read to prohibit the use of federal funds to provide ancillary services necessary to receive an abortion. The 2022 Opinion’s contrary conclusion is withdrawn.”
Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told *The Washington Stand*, “The Biden administration’s lone focus seems to have been advancing the culture of death, including using hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions for unaccompanied minor children.”
She continued, “When people talk about immigration, they rarely recognize that for many minor girls, open borders result in horrific abuse at the hands of human traffickers. Under the Biden administration, this abuse was covered up with taxpayer-funded abortions.”
In fact, under the Biden administration, the trafficking of immigrant children at the border more than tripled, reaching an annual average of over 1,800 child sex trafficking cases. Additionally, over 300,000 children in the care of Biden’s ORR went missing.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has stated that most are likely being sex trafficked.
“How many Americans realized that under Biden, their tax dollars were used to provide abortions that covered up abuse of minors? Probably not many,” Szoch suggested.
“Had President Trump not been elected, this policy would have undoubtedly continued under former Border Czar Kamala Harris. I am so grateful that the Trump administration is terminating this policy. Let’s pray for the Trump administration to continue reversing terrible Biden-era policies, especially those that endanger women and their unborn children.”
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**Topics:** Local News
**Keywords:** abortion, pro-life, Trump
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