Project 2025 on Reproductive Healthcare
It is no secret that the Republican Party and supportive conservative groups want to eliminate abortion from medical care options. They want to go much farther to eliminate all forms of support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and most forms of birth control. They are already attacking:
- distribution of Mifepristone, the chemical abortion pill, by declaring that transporting it through the mail is a violation of the Comstock Act of 1873
- federal funding for military women to travel to alternate states where abortion is legal
- funding for Planned Parenthood
- Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance or that discriminate in violation of the Weldon Amendment which they interpret to mean that no HHS funding may go to a state or local government that discriminates against pro-life health entities or insurers
- the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTLA) that requires covered hospitals and the physicians who work there to perform abortions
- federal funding for training for medical professionals (doctors, nurses, etc.) and doulas used for abortion training
This set of policy objectives places Republican legislators and administrators in charge of health care decisions that should be between a pregnant person and their doctor.
To read more about Project 2025 statements on reproductive healthcare, see the details below.
Project 2025 Statements on Reproductive Healthcare
In the chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Project 2025 makes several statements about reproductive healthcare. Key items include:
“Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology. From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.” (Ref. 1, page 452)
“Respect for Life and Conscience. The CDC should eliminate programs and projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine Department of Health and Human Services family formation. It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care. It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks of intentionally taking a human life through abortion. (Ref. 1, pages 454-455)
“Abortion Pills. Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world. The rate of chemical abortion in the U.S. has increased by more than 150 percent in the past decade; more than half of annual abortions in the U.S. are chemical rather than surgical.” (Ref. 1, page 457)
“Mail-Order Abortions. Allowing mail-order abortions is a gift to the abortion industry that allows it to expand far beyond brick-and-mortar clinics and into Department of Health and Human Services pro-life states that are trying to protect women, girls, and unborn children from abortion.” (Ref. 1, page 458-459)
“Stop promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of long-standing federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs.” (Ref. 1, page 459)
“Prohibit abortion travel funding. Providing funding for abortions increases the number of abortions and violates the conscience and religious freedom rights of Americans who object to subsidizing the taking of life. The Hyde Amendment has long prohibited the use of HHS funds for elective abortions, but an August 2022 Biden executive order pressed the HHS Secretary to use his authority under Section 1115 demonstrations to waive certain provisions of the law in order to use taxpayer funds to achieve the Administration’s goal of helping women to travel out of state to obtain abortions. Moreover, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ OLC) issued a politicized legal opinion declaring, for the first time in the history of Hyde, that this action did not violate the Hyde Amendment and that Hyde applies only to the performance of the abortion itself in violation of the plainly broad language that Congress used. Two of the first actions of a pro-life Administration should be for HHS to withdraw the Medicaid guidance (and any Section 1115 waivers issued thereunder) and for DOJ OLC to withdraw and disavow its interpretation of the Hyde Amendment.” (Ref. 1, page 471)
“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 bulk of federal funding for Planned Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Parenthood comes through the Medicaid program. HHS 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. CMS should resolve pending Section 1115 waivers from Idaho, South Carolina, and Tennessee, which, like Texas in January 2022, are seeking both to prohibit abortion providers from participating in state-run Medicaid programs and to work with other states to do the same. Abortion is not health care, and states should be free to devise and implement programs that prioritize qualified providers that are not entangled with the abortion industry.” (Ref. 1, pages 471-472)
Note: CMS is Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Withdraw Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance or that discriminate in violation of the Weldon Amendment. The Weldon Amendment declares that no HHS funding may go to a state or local government that discriminates against pro-life health entities or insurers. In blatant violation of this law, seven states require abortion coverage in private health insurance plans, and HHS continues to fund those states. HHS under President Trump disallowed $200 million in Medicaid funding from California because of the state’s flouting of the law, but the Biden Administration restored it. HHS/CMS should withdraw appropriated funding, up to and including 10 percent of Medicaid funds, from states that require abortion insurance coverage. DOJ should commit to litigating the defense of those funding decisions promptly to the Supreme Court in order to maximize HHS’s ability to withdraw funds from entities that violate the Weldon Amendment. Additionally, California has announced that it will discriminate against pharmacies that do not carry chemical abortion drugs outside of California. California’s discrimination takes the form of cutting state contracts with such pharmacies and clearly violates the Weldon Amendment. The violation should likewise face the penalties discussed above.” (Ref. 1, page 472)
“Reverse distorted pro-abortion “interpretations” added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) prohibits hospitals that receive Medicare funds from “dumping” emergency patients who cannot pay by sending them to other hospitals. It also mandates that hospitals stabilize pregnant women and explicitly protects unborn children. Hospitals or physicians found to be in violation of the statute could lose all of their federal health funding—Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and other funds—and face civil penalties of up to nearly $120,000. 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. EMTALA requires no abortions, preempts no pro-life state laws, and explicitly requires stabilization of the unborn child. HHS should rescind the guidance and end CMS and state agency investigations into cases of alleged refusals to perform abortions. DOJ should agree to eliminate existing injunctions against pro-life states, withdraw its enforcement lawsuits, and in lawsuits against CMS on the guidance agree to injunctions against CMS and withdraw appeals of injunctions.” (Ref. 1, pages 473 – 474)
“Permanently codify both the Hyde family of amendments and the protections provided by the Weldon Amendment. Congress can accomplish this through legislation such as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (Hyde) and the Conscience Protection Act (Weldon).” (Ref. 1, page 474)
“Eliminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient. One of the emergency contraceptives covered under the HRSA preventive services guidelines is Ella (ulipristal acetate). Like its close cousin, the abortion pill mifepristone, Ella is a progesterone blocker and can prevent a recently fertilized embryo from implanting in a woman’s uterus. HRSA should eliminate this potential abortifacient from the contraceptive mandate.” (Ref. 1, page 485)
Note: HRSA is the Health Resources and Services Administration.
“Ensure that training for medical professionals (doctors, nurses, etc.) and doulas is not being used for abortion training. HHS should ensure that training programs for medical professionals—including doctors, nurses, and doulas—are in full compliance with restrictions on abortion funding and conscience-protection laws.” (Ref. 1, page 485)
“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.” (Ref. 1, page 489)
“OCR should withdraw its pharmacy abortion mandate guidance. OCR 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 and in fact orders them to stock and dispense first-trimester abortion drugs. 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. Moreover, no federal civil rights laws preempt state pro-life statutes. OCR should withdraw its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidance on abortion. OCR should withdraw its June 2022 guidance that purports to address patient privacy concerns following the Dobbs decision but is actually a politicized statement in favor of abortion and against Dobbs. HIPAA covers patients in the womb, but this guidance treats them as nonpersons contrary to law. The guidance is unnecessary and contributes to ideologically motivated fearmongering about abortion after Dobbs.” (Ref. 1, pages 496-497)
Note: OCR is the Office for Civil Rights within Department of Health and Human Services.
References:
- Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise, Project 2025, Presidential Transition Project; https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf