What Project 2025 actually says about birth control is alarming

After Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, the necessity of free and accessible contraception has been a near-constant talking point.

But the cost of contraception in the US is higher than you might think. Indeed, contraception accounted for 30-44 per cent of out-of-pocket healthcare costs for women before it was covered by the ACA, according to Planned Parenthood.

If the ACA — otherwise known as Obamacare — was overturned, over 62.4 million women would find themselves without access to no-cost birth control, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC); and 48 million women would lose access to free emergency contraception.

At the Trump-Harris debate in Pittsburgh earlier this month, Trump admitted that he had the “concepts of a plan” for healthcare policy to replace the ACA, but nothing concrete.

And earlier in May, Trump said he was“looking at” policy to restrict contraception access in some states, before backpedaling on Truth Social.

Project 2025 — the 900-page policy document from former Trump aides and a right-wing think tank — goes even further, suggesting that the emergency contraceptive (morning after) pill is a “potential abortifacient” and should not be considered contraception under the ACA.

Project 2025 also recommends that the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) should eliminate coverage of emergency contraception altogether under its preventive guidelines.

With an explicit anti-abortion agenda throughout the proposals, Project 2025 also suggests that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should “[r]eturn to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan