New Media Matters research on Project 2025 partners’ draconian position on reproductive rights
Specifically, Project 2025 partner groups have:
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Spread misinformation about contraceptive methods or championed limiting access to contraception, largely on religious grounds.
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Published written content, supported legal efforts, or had organizational leadership make comments against the use of safe and effective abortion pills, specifically mifepristone.
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Additionally, The Heritage Foundation, America First Legal, and the Center for Renewing America have endorsed reviving the Comstock Act to restrict access to abortion by potentially banning the mailing of all materials that could be used for the procedure
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Publicly criticized in vitro fertilization.
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Published and presented anti-surrogacy arguments.
Background on Project 2025 and reproductive rights
Project 2025 is a radical right-wing transition plan organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The initiative’s nearly 900-page policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, describes — among many other issues — Project 2025’s plan to attack reproductive rights from several angles. The proposals put forward include removing the term “abortion” from all federal laws and regulations, reversing approval of abortion medications, punishing providers by withdrawing federal health funding, and restricting clinics that provide contraception and STD testing. A chapter in Mandate for Leadership also calls for the next Republican administration to use the Comstock Act, “an 1873 anti-vice law banning the mailing of obscene matter and articles used to produce abortion,” to effectively end “mail-order abortions.”
During a June 22 appearance on MSNBC's The Weekend, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts underlined Project 2025’s broad ambitions, saying its framework is “going to transcend the next 4 years, the next 10 years.”
The Heritage Foundation has been publishing Mandate for Leadership policy books coinciding with presidential elections since 1980, but this is the first year Heritage has included more than 100 right-wing partner organizations, making it a conservative coalition effort. Beyond what’s in the official policy book, many of the Project 2025 partner organizations — including those with strong ties to Christian nationalism — have also leveled other attacks on reproductive rights. These groups have collectively called for massive restrictions on access to contraception, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and abortion drugs such as mifepristone — which are now used in 63% of abortions in the United States.
Key Media Matters research on Project 2025
Media Matters has also recently published thorough research on Project 2025 and the MAGA media universe, including:
- A resource guide that outlines the specific policy and personnel priorities of Project 2025;
And a full list of Media Matters content on Project 2025 can be found here.
