Democrats continue to issue grave warnings about Project 2025, a 900-page policy playbook for the next Republican administration.
They say the manual, authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and co-written by more than 100 groups, is a blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency. Although Trump isn’t involved in Project 2025, and has tried to distance himself from it, about 140 of his former advisers have contributed to it.
Trump on the campaign trail has most recently said that states, not the federal government, should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives or IVF.
In a July 18 campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, warned that Project 2025 would take away more reproductive health care from Americans. She also highlighted that Trump didn’t mention the plan during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Harris told the crowd that Trump didn’t talk about Project 2025 because "their plans are extreme and they are divisive."
"You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are intent on taking reproductive freedoms from the people of America and the women of America — trying to ban abortion nationwide, as they do, and restrict access to IVF and contraception, as their plan calls for," she said.
The plan doesn’t outright call for banning abortion nationwide. However, it makes several recommendations that could greatly limit how abortions are performed in the U.S., particularly by curtailing medication abortion and the mailing of abortion-related materials.
But does the plan actually call to restrict in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, and contraception?
PolitiFact did not find any mention of IVF throughout the document, or specific recommendations to curtail the practice in the U.S. The manual doesn’t outright call for restricting standard contraceptive methods, such as birth control pills or intrauterine devices, known as IUDs. Project 2025 pointed out the same.
However, it does recommend restricting some emergency contraceptives from certain no-cost insurance coverage.
The Harris campaign also pointed to other provisions in the manual, including its call to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception to patients, and allowing employers to not cover contraception over religious and moral exemptions.
What Project 2025 says about contraceptionIn its Health and Human Services section, Project 2025 says that some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. It labels the pill as a potential "abortifacient," or abortion-inducing substance. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involve a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.
The manual calls for allowing employers to deny covering contraception based on moral or religious exemptions, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception to patients.
What Project 2025 says about IVFProject 2025 does not mention IVF or propose restricting it specifically, but it contains language experts say could threaten the practice.
Project 2025’s Health and Human Services section also says the HHS secretary should pursue a "robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology. From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities."
The section continues that the secretary "must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death."
This, experts said, reflects the thrust of fetal personhood, the belief that the legal rights of people should extend to fetuses or embryos.