WHAT THEY DID

On Right of Life

Past Administration

• Repealed the Mexico City policy, thus making U.S. taxpayer funds for abortions and abortion-related services available on international soil.
•  Twice, in 2013 and again in 2015, opposed a pain-capable abortion ban (20-weeks gestation), calling claims babies can feel pain at 20 weeks “scientifically disputed” and the bill contrary to women’s health. The bill never made it to the Oval Office.
• The Obama HHS department, following the Affordable Care Act’s passage, mandated that businesses and non-church religious organizations, including Christian hospitals and schools, be required to provide contraceptives and abortifacients to employees.
•  On April 26, 2013, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, which is now mired in a fetal tissue scandal.

Current Administration

• Reinstated and expanded the Mexico City policy, preventing U.S. taxpayer funding for abortions and abortion-related services on international soil.
• “Strongly supports” the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The bill passed the House but failed in the Senate by a 51-46 margin. The White House says the bill would “promote a science-based approach to unborn life.”
• Keeping a campaign promise, the Trump administration last October rolled back the Obama-era contraceptive-abortifacient requirements for those with sincere religious objections, providing long-sought relief for many Christian organizations.
• Other accomplishments include a new HHS stated mission to serve and protect Americans “at every stage of life, beginning at conception”; and cut off funds to the far-left U.N. Population Fund.

On Religious Freedom

Past Administration

• Implemented rules in 2015 binding medical workers’ participation in procedures related to so-called gender transition, including sex-change surgery. The amended rules were attached to existing rules against discrimination by health care providers.
• Following the Supreme Court’s 2014 gay marriage decision, the Department of Agriculture issued rules that effectively silenced opposition to gay marriage at sites where its employees served as inspectors.

Current Administration

• Trump announced a new HHS division aimed at enforcing constitutional guarantees and statutes—previously signed by Democratic and Republican presidents and still on the books— aimed at protecting medical workers’ conscience rights.
• The Trump Agriculture Department reversed the earlier rule following a lawsuit from a Michigan meat packing company censored by the Obama Agriculture Department for allowing pamphlets in its breakroom that advocate Biblical marriage.

On Judicial Appointments

Past Administration

• The Senate confirmed 329 Obama nominees to federal courts, including Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and four judges on the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Current Administration

• In Trump’s first year, the Senate has confirmed 24 judges, including Neil Gorsuch, a conservative constitutionalist, to the Supreme Court. Some 60 Trump nominees await Senate confirmation votes.

On Israel

Past Administration

• Early in his term, Obama had voiced support for recognizing Jerusalem as capital, but like his two immediate predecessors, he delayed action via a loophole in the 1995 law, still on the books, that calls for Jerusalem to be recognized as the capital of Israel and for the U.S. embassy to be moved there.

Current Administration

• On Dec. 6, 2017, Trump followed through on a promise made by former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to move the embassy to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. The new embassy is scheduled to open this month.

WHAT THEY SAID

On Roe v. Wade

Past Administration

• “[Roe v. Wade] not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.”

Current Administration

• “… Roe v. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world. For example, in the United States, it’s only one of seven countries to allow elective late-term abortions, along with China, North Korea and others. Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be torn from his mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong; it has to change.”

On Religious Freedom

Past Administration

• “When all Americans are treated as equal we are all more free. My administration has been guided by that idea. It’s why we stopped defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and why we were pleased when the Court finally struck down a central provision of that discriminatory law. It’s why we ended ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

Current Administration

• “For too long the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people of faith, bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs. … Faith is deeply embedded into the history of our country, the spirit of our founding and the soul of our nation. We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced anymore.”

On Christianity in America

Past Administration

• “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Current Administration

• “Our rights are not given to us by man; our rights come from our Creator. No matter what, no earthly force can take those rights away. That is why the words ‘Praise be to God’ are etched atop the Washington Monument, and those same words are etched into the hearts of our people.”