Project 2025's impact on abortion rights | MSI Reproductive Choices

Project 2025 is a controversial document that proposed hundreds of US policy changes. Developed by a US conservative think tank, it’s seen as a 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. One year into Trump’s second term, and we’re already seeing changes that are having a devastating impact on marginalised groups around the world.

Understanding Project 2025’s impact on reproductive rights is essential, as it could affect millions of people in the US and globally. 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 that covers almost every aspect of American life and US foreign policy. As of November 2025:

48% of all Project 2025 policies have been enacted or are in progress

Nearly 40% of the reproductive restrictions are completed or underway

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’”

These will have a significant impact on reproductive rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racial equality.

Project 2025 is real

Project 2025 began implementation immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025, as the document proposed.

Project 2025’s legacy will continue to have a global impact. Its aims and the conversations it has generated have emboldened 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 all 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 access to 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.

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”

These Project 2025 policies on abortion would create the most restrictive abortion legislation in modern US history, which would have devastating consequences for women’s reproductive rights nationally and globally.

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.

The global impact of Project 2025 on reproductive rights

On January 24, 2025, the Trump administration reinstated the ‘global gag rule’, a key Project 2025 proposal. The global gag rule 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.

Project 2025 supports the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which claims there is no international right to abortion and commits countries to ‘protecting human life’ and ‘strengthening the family’, language used to deny abortion access and oppose LGBTQ rights.

If Project 2025’s abortion criminalisation and medical misinformation become standard US policy, it provides ammunition to anti-rights groups globally and could undermine sexual and reproductive rights movements worldwide.

We expect the Trump administration to expand the global gag rule further, as outlined in Project 2025. This would have a devastating impact on health globally.

Organisations like MSI Reproductive Choices, which advocate for the right to choose globally, are fighting harder than ever to hold the line.

What does Project 2025 mean for the LGBTQ+ community?

Project 2025 will have a devastating impact on the LGBTQ+ community too. Project 2025 would see LGBTQ+ rights 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”

The LGBTQ+ rights rollbacks outlined in Project 2025 would reverse decades of progress towards equality and create a legal framework for discrimination.

Project 2025 is happening: How we’re responding

With nearly half of all Project 2025 policies already implemented, abortion restrictions, women’s rights rollbacks and LGBTQ+ rights attacks are actively reshaping law and policy in the US and influencing anti-rights movements globally.

MSI Reproductive Choices is fighting harder than ever to:

Advocate for reproductive choice and bodily autonomy worldwide

Protect women’s access to abortion and reproductive healthcare globally

Counter and call out US policy changes affecting international abortion rights

Provide safe abortion services

At MSI Reproductive Choices, we know there’s a fight ahead of us to prevent the US 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.