The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank packed with Trump Administration advisors and allies, has unveiled a new conservative agenda: Project 2025. This policy initiative sets out a series of objectives to carry out in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential Election. The Project is largely a response to roadblocks former President Donald Trump experienced during his term and an attempt to dismantle them. Critically, Project 2025 represents a terrifying prospect in a post-Roe America. It sets forth medieval policy goals in relation to women’s rights and reproductive healthcare, threatening to strip American women of their bodily autonomy. Should Trump win the 2024 election, reproductive healthcare as we know it will be permanently altered.
Project 2025 aims to fundamentally and irrevocably reshape the federal government. The policy agenda has four key goals – 1. “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children,” 2. “dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people,” 3. “defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats,” and 4. “secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’” ²
Alongside its four goals, it has four “pillars” – 1. an 887-page policy agenda, 2. a personnel database aiming to identify conservatives for the next administration, 3. a conservative training academy, and 4. the 180-day playbook, which outlines goals for the first 180 days of a Republican administration.² Project 2025 operates under the philosophy that the President has absolute power over the executive branch.³ It calls for shocking policy action, including the firing of thousands of federal employees and replacing them with those loyal to conservative ideals, dismantling the Department of Education and other crucial federal agencies, cutting taxes, and reducing climate regulations.³ Project 2025 is an expressly authoritarian and Christian nationalist movement that aims to shift the United States into autocracy, undermine the separation of powers, and infringe on individual rights.
This conservative agenda attacks constitutional and legal equality for women and other marginalized groups. It will aim to dismantle government agencies that enforce laws regarding equality like Title IX and the Civil Rights Act.¹ The writers of the project intended to “[delete] the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’); diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’); abortion, reproductive health, and [other] terms… out of every federal rule, agency regulation… and piece of legislation that exists.”⁴ Additionally, a Republican administration would redefine “sex” to include gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy status.¹ This terrifying promise would essentially remove and attack most legal protections for women and reproductive healthcare.
Project 2025 specifically homes in on attacking abortion access. It would require states to report statistics on abortion, “abortion survivors,” abortion-related maternal deaths, and abortion demographic information. Furthermore, Project 2025 promotes requiring treatment of “fetuses born alive” after abortion.⁴ It would withdraw Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance or that discriminate against pro-life health entities or insurers. The outlined policy threatens to reverse the Biden interpretation of EMTALA and affirm the “rights of conscience” for medical providers to deny care to patients.⁴ Under a Republican administration, they would withdraw support for travel to receive abortions and reverse the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, limiting the distribution of abortion pills.⁵
This Republican plan would fundamentally alter the state of reproductive healthcare in the United States. Abortion accessibility would vary widely between states but would generally decrease overall. In communities with conservative state governments, abortions would be next to impossible to obtain. In states with legislatures and governors who support the right to reproductive care, access to these crucial services would still be impacted. Individuals who travel across state lines to receive abortion care could be criminalized, alongside healthcare providers, even in states where abortion would remain legal. Project 2025 would aim to make abortion care, and reproductive healthcare in general more inaccessible and more greatly stigmatized.
Project 2025 serves as a Republican and Trump administration “wish list” – a list of goals that would irrevocably alter the nation. It is a dystopian plan to undermine democracy, dismantle the separation of church and state, alter the fundamental structure of our government, and implant a conservative agenda that will take decades to uproot. Project 2025 is an imminent threat to reproductive rights and American women.
Sources Cited
¹Baker, Carrie N. “Project 2025: The Right’s Dystopian Plan to Dismantle Civil Rights and What It Means for Women.” Ms. Magazine, 16 May 2024, msmagazine.com/2024/02/08/project-2025-conservative-right-wing-trump-woke/.
²“About Project 2025.” The Heritage Foundation, www.project2025.org/about/about-project-2025/.
³Wendling, Mike. “What Is Project 2025?” BBC News, BBC, 12 July 2024, www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do.
⁴Becker, Amanda, et al. “The 19th Explains: What You Need to Know about Project 2025.” The 19th, 23 July 2024, 19thnews.org/2024/07/project-2025-women-education-lgbtq-workforce/.
⁵Talukder, Sabrina. “Project 2025’s Distortion of a Reconstruction-Era Law Could Enact a National Abortion Ban.” Center for American Progress, 18 July 2024, www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025s-distortion-of-a-reconstruction-era-law-could-enact-a-national-abortion-ban/.