In politics, as elsewhere, the question of progress depends upon how you identify your baseline. As abortion rights providers and groups have demonstrated time after time, their baseline is this: We are the summit (and the foundation) of women’s rights. We are entitled to hundreds of millions of federal dollars for our domestic or overseas “family planning” work. No matter that we are representing to clients, or to foreign governments, that federal grantees regard abortion as a normal part of family planning. Sometimes we even advocate for abortion in countries where it’s illegal.

Any retreat on this entitlement, such as President Trump’s new executive order reversing the “Mexico City policy,” is therefore regressive in the eyes of abortion groups and providers. Remember that this policy does not even reduce United States government funding for family planning services overseas. It simply says that Planned Parenthood and other abortion giants can’t have hundreds of millions of our tax dollars if they offer abortion services or counseling in other countries even if they use their own money to do it.