Project 2025's Impact on Abortion Rights | MSI Reproductive Choices

Project 2025 is a controversial document that proposes hundreds of US policy changes. Developed by a US conservative think tank, it’s seen as a proposed Presidential roadmap for the next Republican presidency.

The highly-conservative aims of Project 2025 are focused on a patriarchal future where abortion is banned and LGBTQ+ rights are denied. These changes would create a harmful environment for many marginalised groups – across the USA and globally – and have a devastating impact on our rights and freedoms.

This article will help to explain what Project 2025 is and outline its impact on women, abortion rights and the LGBTQ+ community.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a 900-page conservative policy agenda created for the next Republican president. It covers almost every aspect of American life and US foreign policy. If implemented, it will have a significant impact on reproductive rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racial equality.

Project 2025 was developed by The Heritage Foundation. According to the manifesto, the four main aims of Project 2025 are to:

“Restore the family as the centrepiece of American life and protect our children”
“Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”
“Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”
“Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty’”

Is Project 2025 real?

While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the policy document is closely linked to the Trump Administration and the goals of the Republican Party. Project 2025 proposes to start implementing policy changes immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025.

Many of Project 2025’s ideas and policies have been proposed as legislation by Republican members of Congress in recent years. Whether Project 2025 becomes reality or not, its legacy will continue to have a global impact. Its aims and the conversations it has generated have already empowered anti-rights movements.

A similar example can be seen in the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, which continues to affect women and girls around the world today. The Dobbs decision, which saw the constitutional right to abortion overturned in the US, amplified the voices of anti-rights groups, and had significant, regressive effects on sexual and reproductive rights across the globe, as anti-choice groups were emboldened to roll back reproductive rights elsewhere, too.

What is Project 2025’s impact on women?

If the proposals in Project 2025 are delivered, it will have a major impact on the rights of women and girls in America and globally, including their reproductive rights and the reproductive healthcare to which they’re entitled.

Women, girls, and all people who can become pregnant should have the freedom to make their own reproductive choices. This is vital to gender equality all over the world. By restricting or removing reproductive choice, Project 2025’s impact on women would be catastrophic.

What does Project 2025 mean for abortion rights?

Project 2025 includes wide-reaching attacks on abortion rights and access in the US and around the world, with the document mentioning abortion around 200 times.

Abortion care, choice and rights are essential to the health and well-being of women and girls everywhere. Restricting access to abortion not only restricts women’s rights, it also puts women in danger.

If implemented, Project 2025’s impact on abortion rights would make access to safe abortion a privilege of the rich. It will push poorer women and marginalised communities towards unsafe abortion methods and leave women and girls with little choice but to put their lives at risk. It proposes to criminalise abortion, and punish those who help women to obtain an abortion.

In terms of abortion rights in the US, Project 2025 plans to:

limit access to abortion across the US
withdraw the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone and remove it from the market
use the law (namely the 19th Century ‘Comstock Act’) to ban abortion pills, equipment or materials from being sent through the US Postal Service
dismantle abortion protections under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which require emergency departments that receive Medicare funds to deliver abortion care in cases of emergency treatment, even in states where abortion is banned
increase data collection on abortion and require all states to report all abortions that take place—states that don’t share abortion data will have federal funds withheld
encourage the Department of Health and Human Services to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”

As a global reproductive healthcare provider, we’ve witnessed first-hand the impact that abortion restrictions have on the health, lives and futures of women and girls. In the wake of the 2024 US election, we are reaffirming our commitment to protect reproductive choice globally.

How will Project 2025 impact reproductive rights around the world?

Project 2025 proposes far-reaching attacks on abortion rights around the world.

Project 2025 supports the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which was pushed globally during the last Trump presidency and commits countries to ‘protecting human life’ and ‘strengthening the family’. In reality, this means denying access to abortion and opposing LGBTQ rights.

If implemented, Project 2025 will not be contained to the US: it would give more power to anti-rights groups around the world, and could influence other countries to restrict reproductive rights too. If the US is criminalising abortion and spreading medical misinformation, it provides further ammunition to anti-rights groups and governments globally, and could undermine the positive efforts of sexual and reproductive rights groups worldwide. Organisations like MSI Reproductive Choices, which advocate for the right to choose globally, will need to fight harder to hold the line.

Project 2025 also proposes to reinstate and expand a Republican policy called the Global Gag Rule. The Global Gag Rule, known formally as the Mexico City Policy, blocks US international funding for organisations that provide, advocate for, or even refer to abortion care. However, the policy limits access to all sexual and reproductive healthcare, including contraception. In former iterations of the Gag Rule, this led to a rise in unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

Under the last Trump presidency, the policy was expanded significantly, meaning that millions of women were denied access to essential reproductive healthcare, with fatal consequences. Project 2025 calls for the Global Gag Rule to be reinstated by Trump and expanded further. This would have a devastating impact on sexual and reproductive healthcare and abortion rights globally. In Zimbabwe, where MSI currently receives US funding for outreach healthcare services, it could see services closed and women denied access to contraception.

What does Project 2025 mean for the LGBTQ+ community?

If implemented, Project 2025 will have a devastating impact on the LGBTQ+ community too. Project 2025 would see the rights of LGBTQ+ people eroded, opening the door to further discrimination. Marginalised communities, including the LGBTQ+ community, should never be left behind. Their rights must be protected.

In terms of LGBTQ+ rights, including trans rights, proposals within Project 2025 include to:

eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes from government and universities
amend the definition of sex discrimination so it doesn’t include sexual orientation or gender identity
promote the nuclear family as being a man and a woman only, stating that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them”

Is Project 2025 going to happen and how can we respond?

Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, but it’s important to recognise that its proposals have already given a significant boost to anti-rights and anti-abortion groups worldwide. Even if parts of Project 2025 are implemented, they will have a devastating impact on the lives and rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ communities across the globe.

At MSI Reproductive Choices, we know there’s a fight ahead of us to prevent another Trump presidency from reversing our hard-won progress, but we won’t back down. We’ll keep protecting women’s access to healthcare globally and fighting for the right to choose.

MSI Reproductive Choices is working across six continents to provide and advocate for abortion. Please help defend reproductive choice for women and girls around the world by donating to MSI today.

You can also sign up for the MSI newsletter to stay informed on reproductive rights worldwide and join us on our mission to make a difference.