Friday marks the 53rd annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. The march's theme is "Life is a Gift," and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy penned an X post celebrating one of their most precious gifts. Duffy and his wife, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, are the parents of Valentina, who was born with Down Syndrome. In his post, which included numerous pictures of Valentina and her exuberant joy in every moment, Duffy declared that he is proud to be a part of the Trump administration, which he deemed "the most pro-life administration in U.S. history."
I am so proud to be a part of the most pro-life administration in U.S. history & work for a President who fully supports the most important human rights march in America - the annual March for LIFE 🇺🇸
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) January 22, 2026
Thank you @POTUS for defending life in the womb & for reminding every child,… pic.twitter.com/1nWzAse7G0
I am so proud to be a part of the most pro-life administration in U.S. history & work for a President who fully supports the most important human rights march in America - the annual March for LIFE
Thank you @POTUS for defending life in the womb & for reminding every child, as you did before Congress last year, that “God made you perfectly.”
90% of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. Our youngest daughter, Valentina, has Down Syndrome. She is the best thing that ever happened to our family. An angel on earth!
God bless our pro-life marchers who brave the cold to fight for our most vulnerable and voiceless citizens - the unborn & those with special needs.
That's quite an endorsement, and thus far, it's been proven true. Yes, there is still the sticky wicket of the House of Representatives' attempt to kill the Hyde Amendment in a recent appropriations bill (it failed in the Senate), and Mifepristone, the so-called abortion drug, still being under review by Health and Human Services and the fight to place it back under medical supervision. But the strides that both the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress have made to protect life in the womb and encourage Americans to do the same have been tremendous.
Past presidential administrations have cleared one of two significant pro-life measures: The 1976 Hyde Amendment, named after the late IL Republican Rep. Henry J. Hyde, barred the use of federal Medicaid funds to facilitate abortions. In President George W. Bush's second term, he signed into law the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was aimed to do just what it says.
In his first term, President Donald Trump signed a number of fiscal year appropriations acts restricting Defense and other departments' use of funds to provide abortions. In 2021, President Joe Biden undid much of this, as well as pushed for federal codification of abortion after the United States Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
The election of President Donald Trump for a second term thankfully reversed that pro-abortion trajectory.
Abortion policy at the federal level shifted shortly after President Trump took office, with the administration reinstating many policies from his first term that had been abandoned under President Biden’s administration.
For example, the Mexico City Policy was reinstated during President Trump’s first week in office, which requires foreign organizations to certify they will not perform, promote, or actively advocate for abortion in order to receive U.S. government funding. In June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rescinded guidelines that had required emergency rooms to perform abortions when a pregnant woman had a life-threatening emergency to stabilize her condition – even in states where abortion is otherwise banned.
Other changes within federal departments and agencies included rescinding a Department of Defense policy that provided paid leave and travel expenses for abortion, and a proposed rule change to end abortion at Veterans Affairs facilities.
And to think many leaders of U.S. pro-life organizations were upset with former President Donald Trump during the 2024 election cycle because the Republican platform did not overtly call for championing life. Trump has proven that taking action on the cause of life does so much more than ceremonial lip service with no real action attached.
Read More: When Abortion Has No Moral Limits, Baby Girls Pay the Price
New GOP Bill Mandates Dads Cover Half Pregnancy Costs
The 119th Congress can burnish their pro-life bona fides as well. In the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), they stopped federal funds from being issued to Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) clinics. Many have scoffed that this is a ceremonial act, because it is only for one year. However, this concession accomplished two things:
1) It got the OBBB through both houses of Congress, where a permanent ban would have activated Democrat opposition; and 2) Like what occurred with the now-defunct Public Broadcasting Corporation, the cuts to funding have precipitated the chain reaction of abortion clinic closures.
A 2025 survey by the pro-life activist group Operation Rescue revealed that 54 clinics have closed their doors or stopped doing abortions — the highest number of closures since the 2022 Dobbs decision. Thirty-six of those 54 closures are PPFA clinics. Here is more good news:
Planned Parenthood also closed an additional 28 referral locations since OR’s last survey, which amounts to a record total of 64 Planned Parenthood closures in one year.
“It’s been a gloriously bad year for Planned Parenthood,” says Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, “which means a banner year for the preborn. When abortion clinics close, babies are saved.”
In September, a federal appellate court upheld the administration's defunding of PPFA, to the tune of $792 million. This is now money that can be used to promote life, not destroy it.
After two months of legal wrangling, a federal appellate court confirmed Thursday that, yes, the executive branch may indeed withhold payments not appropriated by Congress. The abrupt tone of their ruling signaled that this legal conclusion should be obvious. A district court’s errant rulings suggest that it is not.
The controversy endangered what Mary Szoch, director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, described as “one of the great accomplishments of the Big Beautiful Bill: defunding Planned Parenthood” for one year. On July 3, an appropriations bill passed by Congress prohibited federal Medicaid funding from going to any organization that “provides for abortions.”
Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson described the provision as a “targeted attack on Planned Parenthood,” which received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024 and committed 402,230 abortions, according to their annual report released in May. U.S. taxpayers contributed 39% of Planned Parenthood’s operating budget for the year, more than any other source.
Here is more domino effect: Three PPFA mega centers in Houston, TX, New York City, and Boulder, CO, completely shuttered their doors in 2025.
Dive Deeper: Appeals Court Tosses Ridiculous Ruling That Kept Money Flowing to Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Is Dying; Long Live the Defunding of Planned Parenthood!
More signs that the Trump administration's actions are putting the abortion industry in the grave happened on Thursday. The Trump administration made the move to end the use of fetal tissue in federally-funded research.
Effective immediately, National Institutes of Health funds will no longer be used for research that involves the fetal tissue of aborted babies. That policy will apply to all NIH grants, cooperative agreements, transaction awards, research and development contracts, and the NIH Intramural Research Program.
The move is a significant win for the pro-life movement, which has long pushed for the United States to respect the dignity of the unborn, whose tissue is bought by researchers after abortions. Under the first Trump administration, the president banned intramural use of aborted fetal tissue, meaning research conducted within United States government facilities.
This time, Trump’s NIH is going further, stating that it will not fund any research involving tissue from aborted babies. The institute frames the move as a significant milestone in the Trump administration’s efforts to “modernize biomedical science and accelerate innovation,” but it comes just one day before the annual March for Life, a significant nod to the pro-life Americans gathering in Washington who have worked for years to arrive at this moment.
“NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said Thursday. “This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease. Under President Trump’s leadership, taxpayer-funded research must reflect the best science of today and the values of the American people.”
Also on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed legislation that requires any university that receives federal dollars to provide information to the pregnant woman on how she can carry her baby to term. This is huge, as high school and college campuses are a pipeline to PPFA without giving a stressed and troubled girl any other options.
🚨 JUST IN: US House PASSES legislation on the eve of March for Life requiring universities that receive federal dollars to give information to pregnant students on carrying the baby TO TERM - rather than abortion, 217-211
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 23, 2026
This is the way.
Save the children. 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/mjYqUwSLbo
JUST IN: US House PASSES legislation on the eve of March for Life requiring universities that receive federal dollars to give information to pregnant students on carrying the baby TO TERM - rather than abortion, 217-211
This is the way.
Save the children.
In 2025, the Trump administration also froze Title X grant money to PPFA because the grants included DEI initiatives against the administration's anti-DEI policies. For decades, PPFA has received this grant money under the guise of family planning.
Title X family planning clinics have played a critical role in ensuring access to a broad range of family planning and preventive health services. The HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA) funds Title X family planning service grant recipients who support hundreds of subrecipients and thousands of service sites. Family planning includes a broad range of services related to achieving pregnancy, preventing pregnancy, and assisting women, men, and couples with achieving their desired number and spacing of children.
However, after the administration lost a lawsuit that required them to unfreeze the funds and award them to the PPFA clinics that applied, PPFA refused the money.
Why? Because of the Health and Human Services revised regulations, which now include this restriction.
1008 – The Prohibition of Abortion
None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.
So, in this refusal, it's been proven: PPFA doesn't care about family planning — they only care about being able to kill babies.
SCOOP: Several Planned Parenthood affiliates have notified the Trump administration that they are refusing $2.3 million in grants that were recently unfrozen as part of a federal lawsuit, according to a letter obtained by @DailyCaller.
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) January 22, 2026
The grants were originally frozen because… pic.twitter.com/75w7gKQxdu
SCOOP: Several Planned Parenthood affiliates have notified the Trump administration that they are refusing $2.3 million in grants that were recently unfrozen as part of a federal lawsuit, according to a letter obtained by @DailyCaller.
The grants were originally frozen because of DEI-related investigations.
The admin previously made it clear that the restored grants would still be reviewed under new grant regulations permitting HHS to consider whether these grants were effectuating Administration priorities, an official tells me.
Vice President JD Vance was a keynote speaker at this year's March for Life just as he was last year. Vance reinforced many of the policy wins mentioned above and also affirmed that the promotion of life has been realigned within foreign policy.
In Friday's address, Vance announced:
And today, our administration is proud to announce a historic expansion of the Mexico City Policy. We're going to start blocking every international GO that performs or promotes abortion abroad from receiving a dollar of U.S. money. Now, we're expanding this policy to protect life, to combat DEI, and the radical gender ideologies that prey on our children. And with these additions, the rule will now cover every non-military foreign assistance that America sends. All-in-all, we have expanded the Mexico City Policy about three times as big as it was before, and we're proud of it because we believe in fighting for life.
Vance further affirmed that under the Trump administration, the pro-life movement would always have an ally in the White House and detailed many of the wins that the legacy media — and even right-of-center media — may not have bothered to mention.
WATCH:
"Under this administration... you have an ally in the White House!"
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 23, 2026
At the March For Life, @VP touts some of the many pro-life victories achieved in the first year of the Trump Administration: pic.twitter.com/XPSU9JZKsB
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