His opening moves on abortion weren’t exactly “shock and awe.” Democrats see an opening.
It didn’t all happen on Day 1.
But by the end of his first full week in office, President Trump waded back into an issue that he finds particularly politically treacherous: abortion.
Late last week, amid a hailstorm of other policy measures, the president pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters. He overturned two orders issued by former President Joseph Biden that had burnished federal abortion protections. And he reinstated a longstanding Republican policy barring federal funds from going to organizations overseas that perform or promote abortions.
Those moves on abortion were nothing like the shock-and-awe approach Trump took to immigration or D.E.I., and they fell far short of what his conservative, anti-abortion base would eventually like him to do.
His strategy reflects the fact that, as much as he claims a sweeping electoral mandate, he faces a delicate political calculus on abortion, which polling shows a majority of Americans believe should be legal. For now, he appears to be looking for ways to reward the ardent abortion opponents who have backed him without immediately taking more overt steps that most Americans oppose.
Democrats and supporters of abortion rights see an opening all the same.
“I think, while he is quiet about it, he is trying to lay the groundwork to erode reproductive rights in ways that are very dangerous,” said Representative Jennifer McClellan, a Virginia Democrat, adding, “We need to be very bluntly pointing out the impact of these orders.”
‘Pro-life in the fullest sense’
One of the Trump administration’s actions that supporters of abortion rights found most alarming — and that opponents were quick to celebrate — was tucked into an executive order that had nothing to do with abortion at all.