(NewsNation) — The conservative policy plan Project 2025 lays out changes that would affect women on multiple fronts, including access to reproductive care, workplace protections and government assistance requirements.
The nearly 1,000-page document, written by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, is a multi-prong blueprint to overhaul the federal government for the next Republican president.
May Mailman, director at the Independent Women’s Law Center, one of the groups that contributed to Project 2025 told Newsweek, “Project 2025 focuses on protecting women and girls in endless ways, including under Title VII, a law designed to create sex-based protections at work.”
The Independent Women’s Law Center did not return a request for comment by NewsNation.
Opponents of the plan call it, “one of the biggest threats to women’s rights that we’ve seen in a long time.”
“It’s going to be devastating for women in this country. We’re going to see tons of roll backs to the days before the Civil Rights Act. We’re going back to the days when women were portrayed as property, not having any rights at all,” Christian F. Nunes, the president of the National Organization for Women, which advocates for women’s rights, told NewsNation.
Democrats are attacking Project 2025, linking it directly to former President Donald Trump, who has ties to people in the organization.
Trump has previously disavowed the plan, posting on his social media site that he knows “nothing” about Project 2025.
He said of the plan’s abortion recommendations, “They’ve gone, really, too far.”
Reproductive care and abortion
Project 2025 repeatedly returns to its pro-life agenda, stating, “Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.”
The document notes the “heroism” of women who chose life and lists several policies that would all but ban abortion access.
It would eliminate access to abortion pills, citing the largely dormant Comstock Act that prohibits the mailing of obscene materials and articles intended for “producing abortion.”
Abortion pills accounted for 63% of abortions in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights nonprofit.
“In doing this, it would pretty much eliminate access to reproductive care and abortion access to many people who can’t afford to travel, live in rural communities and don’t have access to OBGYNs,” Nunes said.
Under the plan, the Food and Drug Administration would revoke approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which is used in more than half of abortions nationwide. The Supreme Court had rejected an effort to reduce access to mifepristone by anti-abortion groups earlier this year.
Project 2025 also calls for mass data collection on abortions using “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.”
With contraception, the plan proposes requiring coverage of natural family planning methods and removing requirements that insurance cover certain emergency contraception. It also calls for reviving Trump-era rules giving employers “religious and moral exemptions” from covering the cost of birth control that was changed under President Joe Biden.
The plan also says that the Department of Health and Human Services should be able to defund Medicaid approval of Planned Parenthood despite the health center providing several services outside of abortion care.
“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 plan states.
“Planned Parenthood is often the only option for women with low incomes seeking contraception,” Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, said at a news conference last month. “This is about power and control and the Republicans’ obsession with controlling women’s bodies.”
Gender equality
Project 2025 calls for the removal of language stating “gender equality” and “gender equity,” among other terms, from “every federal piece of legislation” as they promote “abortion on demand.”
It also recommends renaming the Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment as the “USAID Office of Women, Children, and Families” which would refocus on pro-life initiatives.
The plan requests the immediate dissolution of the Gender Policy Council, established by Biden to “advance gender equity and equality in both domestic and foreign policy development and implementation,” according to the White House.
The council works on issues including gender-based violence and workplace protections for women, according to a progress report the agency released last year.
Under Project 2025, disbanding the council would have the “dual effect of demonstrating that promoting life and strengthening the family is a priority,” the document stated.
Government assistance
Project 2025 calls for the elimination of several social safety nets.
Under the plan, Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for children from low-income families during their first five years, would end.
Project 2025 states that the program has “little or no long-term academic value for children.”
Research shows that the program has helped boost educational attainment and fight intergenerational poverty.
The document also proposes linking federal assistance to family-oriented marriage plans calling out the Biden administration for “subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage.”
Under its family first agenda, federal aid should be used for “policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
Kari Winter, a professor of American Studies focusing on gender at the University at Buffalo, told NewsNation this is “highly concerning.”
“The way Project 2025 is advocating the notion of a family is where gender roles are very traditional,” she said. “They say they support family values, but it’s really the patriarchal family.”
“We’ve painstakingly made such an advance on women’s rights in the United States, and it’s crumbling,” she also said.
Project 2025 also urges ending the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which provides student loan relief to borrowers who work in federal, state, local or tribal governments, or for a nonprofit organization.
Sixty-four percent of all student loan debt belongs to women, according to the Education Data Initiative.
Workplace protections
Project 2025 asks legislators to pass a law that requires employers who provide benefits for abortion care to “provide equal or greater benefits” to support pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood and adoption.
It also calls for employers to provide “pro-life workplace accommodations for mothers.”
This would be through “incentivizing on-site childcare” and passing a law saying that if an employer provides on-site child care as a benefit, it is not subtracted from an employee’s hourly pay or salary.
