Project 2025 Attacks Abortion

Your breakdown on the Project 2025 fascist attacks on abortion and reproductive healthcare

As a human rights lawyer, I am reading the entire 900 page Project 2025 fascist manifesto so you don’t have to, and giving you the tools to debunk its claims. Subscribe to receive these regular updates, and if you’re in a position to support my work at $5/mo or $50/year, I am more than grateful.

Here’s my initial overview of P25, titled, “Project 2025 Invites Fascism To America.”

Here’s my previous article on P25, titled, “P25 attacks on DEI.”

Below I cover the Project 2025 attacks on abortion and reproductive healthcare.

So, Let’s Address This.

A supporter holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 14, 2023. (Photo cred: Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)

Project 2025 Attacks Abortion Access

Let me be clear right off the bat. Denying women reproductive health access is ineffective, cruel, and deadly. Every study ever conducted on abortion shows that abortion bans do not work. They do not decrease abortion rates. They only increase infant mortality rates and maternal mortality rates by 24% or more. Since Roe was overturned, states that banned abortion have suffered a 16% increase in infant mortality. Reproductive health access is fundamentally about whether or not we trust women? Those who trust women know that women, their physicians, and their loved ones are best suited to make these private, intimate, personal healthcare decisions. Those who do not trust women want a right wing fascist government to force their one-size-fits-all view on millions of women, and thus ban abortion access.

If Project 2025’s dystopian bans on abortion are implemented, our nation will suffer massive spikes in infant and maternal mortality. Let’s dive into the P25 attacks on abortion access and debunk the claims it makes to justify its backwards policies.

P25 Mentions Abortion At Least 200 Times

The phrases “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “reproductive rights” are referenced at least 210 times in the P25 manifesto. The P25 Forward sets the tone for how degradingly it treats abortion, stating:

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms …abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.

MAGAs profess to stand for First Amendment rights while championing a punitive government ban on words they don’t like. And it quickly goes downhill from here. For as much as MAGA extremists claim abortion is about “state’s rights” (an absurd position in and of itself), it’s a position they clearly do not believe as the P25 manifesto makes clear the goal is a national abortion ban.

P25 Bans Abortion Contrary to Basic Science

P25 addresses abortion in every aspect of our lives, and details every conceivable measure to restrict access—all in contravention to basic scientific facts. On Page 6, P25 fascists immediately promise to “protect family life” by “deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion,” and instead “fund alternatives to abortion like adoption.” In doing so the manifesto completely ignores the fact that banning abortion results in increase maternal and infant mortality, and hence actively destroys family life. And while I can’t dive into it for the sake of brevity, there are a host of problems with the right wing push to advance adoption as a replacement to abortion.

Likewise on Page 62, P25 fascists demand the next Conservative President ban comprehensive sex education for young people:

The President should immediately revoke Executive Order 1402041…related to the establishment or promotion of the Gender Policy Council and its subsidiary issues. Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”)…

In doing so P25 completely ignores that facts that abortion rates, STD rates, and abuse rates decrease when young people receive comprehensive sex education.

Next, on Page 104, P25 calls to end abortion funding for active duty servicemembers. This is shockingly ill informed for at least three reasons. First, it hurts military readiness by denying healthcare to servicemembers who need access. Second, it is literally big government dictating to a woman what her healthcare needs may or may not be, and undermines medical science with a one size fits all approach is beyond ludicrous. Third, given the epidemic rate of sexual assault in the military, P25 fascists are dooming women who are impregnated through rape to have their rapists child.

P25 Defunds Abortion Access

Throughout the manifesto, P25 lazily buckets abortion, climate justice, and gender equality as one combined “woke” policy that should be repealed nationally and internationally. This includes calls to defund USAID, which allegedly provides unlimited abortions at any time globally. On page 260, among other places, P25 condemns USAID for “USAID’s priority of funding the global abortion industry negates programs that promote life, women’s health, and the family.” Of course, P25 provides no actual reasoning, facts, or logic to validate any of these claims, but this is P25 par for the course.

On Page 265 the P25 manifesto again directly contradicts logic and science when it says:

The continued high rate of maternal and infant mortality is a persistent global tragedy. Contrary to current publicity, this problem is not solved by abortion.

In reality, no one claims abortion is a panacea to high rates of maternal and infant mortality. We are stating, factually, that abortion bans increase maternal and infant mortality, and abortion and reproductive access decrease those rates. Again, P25 offers zero evidence for its bald faced lie about abortion and infant/maternal mortality rates. Policies that actually decrease abortion rates—like guaranteed universal healthcare, paid family medical leave, universal basic income, free school lunches, guaranteed housing, affordable education, and a guaranteed living wage—are all unsurprisingly absent from the P25 manifesto.

Next, P25 spends several hundred pages making sure to declare that “abortion is not healthcare.” This is, of course, patently false and contrary to medical science. That doesn’t stop P25 from demanding that the UN, HHS, USAID, the US military, our public school system, and any organization under the US Governments influence or control be banned from stating the plain fact that abortion is healthcare.

P25 Denies Women and Girls Healthcare Privacy

By Page 455, P25 delves into full blown fascism by demanding HHS and the CDC monitor every phase of a woman’s reproductive health cycle. P25 demands:

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. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion. Moreover, abortion should be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s life. Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.

There’s so much to unpack here. First, words have meanings, and P25 seems to magically make up its own meanings. “Miscarriage management” or “standard ectopic pregnancy treatment” are forms of abortion. P25’s demand that “they should never be conflated with abortion” is the result of asinine anti-science claims that deny abortion is healthcare. Likewise, P25’s dystopian call to track every abortion, at what stage of gestation, required monitoring and reporting, and tying it to individual women is deeply concerning. If life begins at conception (as MAGAs claim), then will a MAGA government mandate that women report their menstrual cycles to their local HHS facility? And what happens if they refuse? Will parents need to report when their young daughters begin menstruating for the first time? If these questions sound ridiculous and offensive, it is because they are ridiculous and offensive, but frighteningly, they are also what P25 appears to mandate when requiring the CDC and HHS to use “every available tool” to track women’s bodies.

And finally, P25 wants to report “every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.” This is a not so subtle statement of the right wing propaganda claim of “late term” or “post birth” abortions. In fact, P25 calls to pass legislation to this effect, titled the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.” How sad that I need to once again clarify that there is no such thing as a “post birth abortion.” That’s called murder of a human being, and we already have laws for that.

And to top it off, any state that does not comply with P25’s reckless and dangerous violation of health privacy would lose federal Medicaid funding, per the proposed Ensuring Accurate and Complete Abortion Data Reporting Act of 2023. This would further harm low income people, disproportionately Black and brown people, and thus further spike mortality rates for these already marginalized communities who rely on Medicaid to live. In short, “give up your privacy rights or die,” is the message from the so-called “pro life” party.

But don’t worry, it still gets even worse.

P25 Criminalizes Mifepristone (but not Viagra)

On Page 458, the P25 manifesto calls to ban abortion pills generally and mifepristone access specifically—even making distribution a criminal act. Why? Because in mifepristone’s 20 years of use it has caused “26 deaths of pregnant mothers.” It should come as no surprise to you that despite Viagra’s 15X higher death rate, P25 makes exactly zero calls to ban Viagra. P25 mentions mifepristone and abortion pills more than a dozen times—but never once mentions Viagra. Instead, on page 562, P25 demands the next conservative President “Announce a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462 Against Providers and Distributors of Abortion Pills That Use the Mail.” Almost like P25 is making explicitly clear that it does not care about protecting life, it only cares about controlling women.

Continuing its anti-science escapade, on page 461, P25 demands an end to abortion-derived fetal tissue research. MAGA hypocrisy is again on full display with this demand, as the life saving COVID treatment Donald Trump received as President was created from fetal tissue.

Next, on Pages 471-473, P25 calls to ban funding for abortion travel. This aligns well with the GOP’s unanimous vote to block a bill that would have protected a woman’s right to travel out of state for abortion without fear of prosecution if their home state bans abortion. In the same breath, P25 also calls to ban Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding, which of course would result in increased maternal mortality. In fact, P25 goes on to call for a complete ban on all abortion providers nationwide—including funding for private insurance companies who provide abortion access, and gutting abortion access in the ACA.

The P25 (so-called) “Life Agenda”

All of the above falls under what P25 refers to as “The Life Agenda.” The only problem with that title is, every P25 policy on abortion demonstrably decreases life and increase rates of maternal and infant mortality. In fact, with potential bans on Medicaid funding for states that don’t comply with P25’s fascist bans on abortion healthcare, the so called Life Agenda will result in overall increases in mortality rates for all low income people. Some have defended P25’s abortion policy by stating it never explicitly bans all abortion—but this is disingenuous framing. They might as well claim people aren’t banned from accessing an abortion clinic surrounded by a half mile wide moat infested with alligators because someone could theoretically swim across if they’re fast enough. (Fact check, no one could swim fast enough).

Project 2025 effectively bans abortion by defunding public healthcare access to provide abortions, restricts and bans mifepristone under criminal penalties, mandates women and girls essentially report their menstrual cycles to the federal government, bans teaching young people comprehensive sex education, bans educating nurses and doulas on how to perform abortions, and requires affirmative opt ins for medical students studying to become physicians on training to safely and correctly perform abortions—among a host of additional hurdles and blockades that don’t currently exist. Of note, P25 makes no explicit mention of in vitro fertilization (“IVF”), but given the continued Republican opposition to legislation to protect IVF access, the intention is clear that IVF will not survive a P25 run administration.

In Summary

P25 disregards life, common sense, and science, and views essentially all abortion and reproductive access as evil. Based on what it defines as “biblical values,” P25 ultimately seeks to ban abortion altogether through defunding access, criminalizing access, and denying young people basic education and knowledge of how their own bodies work. It is dead set on transforming our secular government into a theocratic Christian nationalist fascist state. One in which women do not have the fundamental human right of personal autonomy, nor do physicians have the common sense ability to practice medical science according to actual science, not evangelical theocracy.

Therefore, it is absolutely critical we remain vigilant and engaged to ensure P25 does not become policy. It is not an exaggeration to say it is literally a matter of life and death for millions of people in America. You have my commitment to continue to publicize and expose P25’s fascist policies, and arm you with the tools and knowledge to rebuke them. And I am grateful for your support to continue to advance this cause of human rights, accountability, and justice.

This is the third in a series of posts I am writing after researching Project 2025. Subscribe to receive these regular updates, and if you’re in a position to support my work at $5/mo or $50/year, I am more than grateful.

Why Your Support Matters: Every dollar we spend is a vote for the kind of future we want. Help me create a future more committed to justice and universal human rights. Subscribe, and I welcome your thoughts, feedback, and insights. Thank you.