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Trump’s reelection has been described by advocates and experts as a final blow to reproductive rights.

These fears are not unfounded. Trump appointed three of the five conservative Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade ending the constitutional right to abortion and unleashing a health-care apocalypse. Vulnerable women found themselves in even greater danger thanks to abortion bans in over a dozen states that have enabled abusers and left doctors fearful of prosecution if they intervene in pregnancy-related emergencies that require abortion care. ProPublica reported such bans appeared to have led to the deaths of several women in Georgia and Texas who were unable to get necessary abortion care when faced with dire medical complications. Add to this, Project 2025—the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—recommends that various federal agencies take sweeping actions to roll back abortion access.

Trump’s convictions on abortion have been flexible throughout his career. During the presidential campaign, he tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and claimed he would leave abortion policy “to the states.” Immediately after the election, however, his acolytes admitted that “Project 2025 is the agenda.”

Given all this, reproductive rights experts and advocates agree that the future of abortion access is bleak. But there are several actions President Biden and his administration could take before Inauguration Day that could make it harder for the next administration to enact their absolutist anti-abortion agenda. “Some of [the ideas] are just throwing monkey wrenches into the gears,” says David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University whose scholarly work focuses on abortion access, “and maybe with the chaotic Trump administration that helps delay some of the harm.”

“Some of [the ideas] are just throwing monkey wrenches into the gears, and maybe with the chaotic Trump administration, that helps delay some of the harm.”

While Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on “restoring reproductive freedom,” it’s unclear if the Biden administration will prioritize these requests before the transition. The White House did not respond on-the-record to the specific proposals mentioned in this story, but pointed to the administration’s record of defending and expanding reproductive rights. But some say there’s more they can, and should, do. “If the administration was hesitant or holding off, now is the time, I think, to not hesitate,” Rachel Rebouché, reproductive rights legal scholar and dean of Temple Law School, says.

Here’s a look at some of what the administration could do to stymie the Trump administration’s anti-abortion agenda before he’s back in the White House.

Preemptively pardon providers of abortion pills

The Comstock Act is a 19th-century anti-obscenity law still on the books that anti-abortion Republicans argue should be used to “enforce federal law against providers and distributors of [abortion] pills.” In December 2022, Biden’s DOJ issued a memo arguing that the law cannot be used to prosecute abortion pill providers. Earlier this year, Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to repeal parts of the bill lawmakers say could be most relevant to abortion, but the measure has languished in House and the Senate committees.

Given that Project 2025 advises Trump’s DOJ to invoke the Comstock Act to prosecute providers of abortion pills, some advocates suggest that Biden preemptively pardon anyone who could be implicated for doing so. Cohen, from Drexel, notes that a preemptive pardon “would make it so that the people who have been mailing........

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