Michigan Dems warn about Project 2025 and reproductive health care in a 2nd Trump term

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor speaks out against Project 2025 and the Trump-Vance campaign. | Kyle Davidson

As Republicans gather in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, Democrats across the nation are continuing to sound the alarm on Project 2025, a collection of far-right policy proposals pitched as a transition plan for a conservative presidential administration.

Created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the initiative centers its proposals on four goals: “Restore the family as the centerpiece 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” and “Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely — what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

As questions surrounding President Joe Biden’s mental sharpness and viability as a candidate continue to plague the campaign, Democrats have shifted their focus to Project 2025, tying the far-right blueprint to former President Donald Trump. 

While the former president has attempted to distance himself from the effort,  disavowing some of its proposals and stating “I have no idea who is behind it,” in a post to Truth Social, Project 2025 has been tied to a number of former Trump administration employees.

A review from CNN found 140 former members of the Trump administration, including six former cabinet members, had contributed to Project 2025’s  more than 900-page “Mandate for Leadership.” 

The document includes a myriad of proposals restricting pregnancy and abortion, including removing emergency contraception from services that must be covered by the affordable care act, calling on the FDA to reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs such as mifepristone, barring hospitals from providing emergency abortion care and enforcing restrictions against mailing abortion medication. 

During a Wednesday press conference in support of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, state Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing), Lansing Mayor Andy Schor and infertility physician Dr. Molly Moravek shared concerns that electing Trump and Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s newly announced pick for vice president, could lead to a nationwide ban on abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“Trump has given us no reason to doubt that he will gut our reproductive rights; it’s the one promise that he has delivered on,” Tsernoglou said, noting the former president’s pride in appointing the Supreme Court Justices who helped the Court overturn Roe v. Wade. 

Moravek noted her infertility patients also face a higher risk for an ectopic pregnancy, where the pregnancy occurs outside the uterus. This is the number one cause of early maternal mortality and there is no medical procedure that can save the pregnancy, Moravek said. 

“Saving that woman’s life could be illegal for doctors like me if Trump takes office again and an abortion ban is imposed on us,” Moravek said. 

Tsernoglou pointed to U.S. Senate Republicans blocking efforts to protect IVF and contraception, while Schor noted Vance’s stance against abortion and his votes against IVF and contraception measures. 

“I’ve heard in the past from folks that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Well, in this election today, the differences are stark, the Trump-Vance Republicans with a blueprint by Project 2025 want to control women’s bodies and take away their reproductive rights,” Schor said. “The Biden-Harris Democrats want to provide reproductive rights to women and will both govern and appoint people to the event that will ensure rights are given and not taken away.”

While the party platform adopted last week softened the party’s stance on abortion — now opposing late-term abortion “while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF” — the platform also supports establishing fetal personhood through the 14th Amendment, which the 19th reports “would have the practical effect of prohibiting abortion at all stages of pregnancy” which could be extended nationally should courts affirm state-level policies extending the right to equal protection under the law.  

Schor also advised against taking the platform as gospel. 

“Party platforms are a statement of a party. People who are governing don’t govern based on a party platform,” Schor said. 

While Trump has moved away from endorsing a nationwide abortion ban, saying the issue should be left to the states, Schor said if Republicans gain the majority in Congress and send the matter to the president’s desk, he had every faith Trump would let the matter become law.

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