Kamala Harris must fight against Project 2025’s anti-abortion roadmap
In June, a friend of mine who goes to school in Iowa and has recently banned abortions at around six weeks, when most women are not even aware they’re expecting, was riding the train. My friend told me that people were planning to stock up on contraceptives like Plan B and birth control, not just for themselves but also to give away to other students in need. Their story is not an isolated one. They did not feel they could trust the state or school to help students in a crisis access resources. It is for this reason that I am genuinely concerned about the implications a second Donald Trump administration would have on health care–whether in terms of gender affirming care, abortion services, or affordability. It is not the responsibility of teens and young adults to ensure access to reproductive health care. The responsibility rests on political leadership.
Although Trump has attempted to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025, the policy roadmap for a second Trump term paints a grim picture of conservatives’ agenda for reproductive health care. Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, has written similar policy compilations in the past for conservative presidents. Former Republican presidents also implemented many Heritage’s recommendations. CNN reported that at least 140 former Trump administration officials were involved with the document’s formulation, including some of its most radical anti-abortion aspirations.
Life-threatening anti-abortion proposals are littered throughout its 30 chapters. The authors of Project 2025 state in the preface that the implementation by the executive branch of a blanket “ban on federal funding for abortion” is the next step after Roe. The authors celebrate this as a win for families while ignoring the fact that maternal mortality rates in the United States are 62% higher in states that do not have protected abortion access. This is also their rationale for a hypothetical ban on all abortion pills under a second Trump administration. The most frequently referenced chapter in relation to abortion care, Chapter 17, proposes a prosecutorial crackdown on “providers and distributors of abortion pills that use the mail” spearheaded by the Department of Justice.
Project 2025’s abortion limitations do not stop with the United States. Conservatives also want to bring about a cultural shift in the world that will stigmatize all abortions. The funding for NGOs that provide abortion services would be terminated. All funding for NGOs that provide abortion services would be terminated.
They want to make the country’s abnormally high maternal mortality rate the international standard.
Even with conservatives’ hyper-focus on abortion restrictions, Trump claimed earlier this month that abortion was not at the forefront of voters’ minds. While Vice President Kamala Harris believes–and is aware–that the opposite is true. For a stark change, it is refreshing to see a presidential nominee who is directly impacted by crackdowns on reproductive health care.
But it’s not enough to just be a woman running for president.
Harris’ campaign should stress the importance of reproductive health-care access beyond the bare minimum of preventing a federal ban on abortion. She must unapologetically campaign for the active subsidization of abortion care, as well as its legalization and protection. She must incentivize educational institutions in abortion-restrictive states to give resources to students to get the health care they need.
Abortion care restrictions will impact everyone reliant on U.S. subsidization. It is far greater than one local context.
While some may deride Harris’ campaigning on abortion as needlessly divisive, I beg to differ. Polls indicate that extreme restrictions on reproductive health care do not enjoy widespread support. Gallup shows that a majority of Americans (85%) support legalizing abortion in some form. The 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was opposed by 57% of Americans. It is possible that this was the same reason why a national abortion ban was not mentioned in the official GOP platform for the first time in 40 years. Arguably, it is the same reason a national abortion ban was not mentioned in the official GOP platform for the first time in 40 years.
While many Democrats have said they are incredibly relieved now that President Joe Biden has departed from the ticket, I urge us and the Harris campaign to not lose sight of what is at stake for all Americans this election.
Harris must protect our health care, and our right to abortion, at all costs.
