Project 2025 Decimates Reproductive Rights

Project 2025 is predicated on a belief that U.S. laws, government, and policy should be informed by a Christian Nationalist lens and its views of morality. The Christian Nationalist movement behind Project 2025 wants to completely eradicate reproductive and abortion rights in the U.S., going so far as to include measures to create access barriers to abortion, control how we discuss reproductive health, and much more.

Project 2025 doesn’t just attempt to end reproductive rights – its aim is to censor and hinder discussion of reproductive rights within our federal government and erase language used to describe reproductive rights.

The next conservative President…starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term…out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists (Page 4-5).

Project 2025 lays out a plan to upend the Department of Health and Human Services and re-cast it as the “Department of Life” to use in its dangerous anti-reproductive rights agenda. Page 489 details how it seeks to end federal support of abortion rights.

The Life Agenda. The Office of the Secretary should eliminate the HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force and install a pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children. Additionally, HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans “from conception to natural death. (Page 489)

Project 2025 would eliminate medications, such as mifepristone, that offer a safe, proven way to end a pregnancy, thus creating barriers to accessing safe, effective medication abortion.

[The FDA should] Reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start…Now that the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion, the FDA is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval, which was premised on pregnancy being an “illness” and abortion being “therapeutically” effective at treating this “illness. (Page 458)

Even if Project 2025 doesn’t succeed in eliminating medication abortion, it would enable pharmacists to deny dispensing such medications by allowing pharmacists to place religious beliefs before your health.

[The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights] should withdraw its “Obligations Under Federal Civil Rights Laws to Ensure Access to Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Services” guidance for retail pharmacies, which purports to address nondiscrimination obligations of pharmacies under federal civil rights laws…The guidance invents this so-called requirement and fails to acknowledge that pharmacies and pharmacists have the right not to participate in abortions, including pill-induced abortions, if doing so would violate their sincere moral or religious objections. (Page 496)

Project 2025 seeks to deny emergency abortion care when people present to hospitals with pregnancy complications, attacking federal guidelines that guarantee a standard of care.

Reverse distorted pro-abortion “interpretations” added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. …In July 2022, HHS/CMS released guidance mandating that EMTALA covered hospitals and the physicians who work there must perform abortions, to include completing chemical abortions even when the child might still be alive. The guidance also declared that EMTALA would protect physicians and hospitals that perform abortions in violation of state law if they deem those abortions necessary to stabilize the women’s health. This novel interpretation of EMTALA is baseless. (Pages 473)

Even if you reside somewhere that’s not hostile to abortion, Project 2025 would create surveillance and funding barriers for states that offer them – tracking abortions on a case-by-case basis.

Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. (Page 455)

Project 2025 plans to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, using Medicaid as its tool of choice.

Policymakers should end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect funding to health centers that provide real health care for women… [The Department of Health and Human Services] should take two actions to limit this funding: 1. Issue guidance reemphasizing that states are free to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans. 2. Propose rulemaking to interpret the Medicaid statute to disqualify providers of elective abortion from the Medicaid program. Congress should pass the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, which would accomplish the goal of defunding abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. (Pages 471-472)

In short, Project 2025 would (the following list in not exhaustive):

• Ban language describing reproductive rights + abortion from federal policy;
• Eliminate federal support for abortion;
• Create barriers to access abortion in states where reproductive rights are respected;
• Endanger all pregnant patients who show up at hospitals with pregnancy complications;
• Increase surveillance and monitoring of abortion patients; and
• Enable health care providers and pharmacists to deny health care based on their personal beliefs.

These are just some of the ways that Project 2025 plans to prioritize its radical Christian Nationalist agenda ahead of reproductive rights on a nationwide scale. But there are steps you can take to help make sure that doesn’t happen.

Over the coming weeks, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will be highlighting specific topics within Project 2025 and posting them on our social media on a weekly basis. Please share these as far and wide as you can. Visit our #DemocracyNotTheocracy campaign page here to learn more about ways that you can get involved in your local community to help raise awareness about the dangers of Project 2025. The AHA has compiled several ways that you can show your support for democracy, not theocracy. We are:

• Offering grants to AHA Chapters and Affiliates to help them host events and activities in their local areas;
• Hiring Democracy Defense Fellows at colleges and universities in key battleground states to help young people understand the dangers of Project 2025; and
• Providing free stickers, postcards, and graphics so people can spark conversations in their local communities.

Tags: Project 2025