The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights is investigating 13 states — all but one of which are led by Democratic governors — that require insurance plans to cover abortion.
The department’s news release states that it is investigating the states “based on information” that suggest they are violating the Weldon Amendment, a law that prohibits state or local governments receiving federal health care funds from “discriminating” against hospitals, providers and health insurance plans that refuse to provide or refer for abortions.
The affected states, the Associated Press reports, are California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Vermont is the only one state in that group led by a Republican governor. Those states all require abortion coverage in both private and Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance plans, as well as for Medicaid enrollees, according to KFF, although HHS has not clarified the specific scope of the investigation.
The news comes as the latest example of the Trump administration threatening to withhold federal funding from predominantly Democratic-led states that do not comply with its political priorities. The government froze hundreds of millions of dollars in both Medicaid and child care funding from Minnesota, and $10 billion in social services funding from five Democratic-led states.
The law that HHS is now focusing on — named after former Florida Republican congressman David Weldon — has been passed as an amendment to the annual appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education every year since 2005. The Trump administration initially put Weldon forth as a nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before withdrawing his name early last year.
Abortion rights supporters allege the Weldon Amendment allows providers to discriminate against patients and deny them necessary care, while abortion rights opponents say it prevents government discrimination against providers who do not want to perform the procedure. Democratic administrations have historically argued for a narrower interpretation of the law, while Republicans have interpreted it more broadly, Mary Ziegler, a legal scholar who focuses on abortion and is based at the University of California, Davis, told MS NOW.
Ziegler called the latest news “a Project 2025 investigation,” noting that the 900-page playbook issued by the Heritage Foundation ahead of President Donald Trump’s re-election calls for withdrawing Medicaid funds from states that require abortion insurance coverage.
“I think this is the Trump administration generally trying to placate social conservatives in ways that won’t hurt the GOP politically,” she said.
Indeed, Thursday’s announcement comes as a rare win for opponents of abortion rights, some of whom have been frustrated with the Trump administration for not taking stronger action to restrict access to abortion pills in particular.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, a group that opposes abortion rights, said in a statement: “Americans should never be forced to choose between their deeply held moral or religious convictions and their ability to participate in the health care system.”
“These investigations send a clear message that conscience rights are not optional and must be respected,” Tobias added.
Gavin Oxley, spokesperson for Americans United for Life, said:
“No circumstances exist in which any health care entity’s conscientious objection should be coercively overruled by any government authority, forcing participation or payment for abortion.”
Officials at organizations that support abortion rights, meanwhile, cast the latest news as more evidence that the administration is staunchly opposed to abortion access despite Trump seemingly backing away from the issue since he resumed office.
Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center, said that the Trump administration is “weaponizing” the law “to rip away affordable abortion care from people and to punish states where this care remains protected.”
Liz McCaman Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the government is “overriding the will of the people,” who polling suggests predominantly support abortion rights.
“Using the Weldon Amendment to gut state insurance coverage sets a dangerous precedent — one where any state policy touching abortion can be unraveled from Washington, no matter what voters or legislators in that state decided,” she said. “That’s not conscience protection. That’s federal coercion.”
An HHS spokesperson said that the 13 states have 20 days to provide the requested information to the administration.
O’Connor, from the National Women’s Law Center, told MS NOW the investigation could eventually lead to a withholding of federal funding from the relevant states. In January, the Trump administration threatened to do just that when it issued a notice of violation to Illinois over a state law requiring health care providers to refer for abortion services, which the government alleged violated the Weldon Amendment and a similar law known as the Coats-Snowe Amendment.
Thursday’s news, O’Connor said, “isn’t a notice of violation, but we still don’t know where it’s going.”
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