Although Project 2025 hails the overturning of Roe v. Wade as “the greatest pro-family win in a generation,” this is only the beginning of the conservative agenda to rid the nation of abortion access. According to Project 2025, the next conservative president elected must coordinate with Congress to “enact the most robust protections for the unborn.”
These so-called “protections” infringe on a woman’s right to privacy. One problematic reform proposed by Project 2025 is against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current “abortion surveillance and maternity mortality reporting systems.” Project 2025 urges the Department of Health and Human Services to collect the following data on abortion: how many abortions are performed within a state’s borders, the gestational age of the terminated pregnancy, the woman’s state of residence and the reason for and method of abortion. The policy mandate also calls for this data to be categorized by how a pregnancy ends, including “spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.”
Project 2025 is littered with misinformation surrounding the mortality rates associated with abortion procedures, like taking specialized pills. While Project 2025 is correct that mifepristone, a drug that blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy, has been associated with 26 deaths since its approval over 20 years ago, this is nowhere near the number of deaths from illegal abortions prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In fact, there were 119 deaths from induced abortions in 1963, 99 deaths in 1965 and 39 deaths in 1972, numbers which dropped significantly after the Roe v. Wade decision. Each of these numbers is from one individual year, making 26 deaths across more than 20 years an ineffective argument for banning mifepristone.
The abortion reforms put forth by Project 2025 are disturbing efforts from conservatives to control women and their decisions. The reforms are made under the guise of protecting life, but they do just the opposite. If conservatives were really “pro-life,” they would not disregard why women choose abortion over protecting an embryo. That is pro-birth, not pro-life.
