In response to Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies plotting to gut access to contraceptives nationwide, DNC Spokesperson Aida Ross released the following statement: 

“Every day, Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies take their plans to restrict access to contraception further. With Trump’s blessing, Project 2025 is creating an extreme and dystopian blueprint to ban abortion, gut access to contraception and IVF, and surveil women’s pregnancies if Trump gets back into office. Trump and his MAGA minions are telling us exactly how far they’ll go in implementing their dangerous anti-choice agenda if given the chance — and Americans should believe them.” 

NEW: Donald Trump and his extremist Project 2025 allies are plotting to gut access to contraceptives.

Politico: “As president, Trump enacted several policies that made it more difficult for people, particularly the working class and the poor, to obtain contraception — from allowing more employers to opt out of birth control coverage in their workers’ health insurance to imposing restrictions on the Title X family planning program that triggered a mass exodus of clinics.

“Conservative allies want to reimpose those policies and go further if he wins in November. Their “Project 2025” blueprint includes proposals to require coverage of natural family planning methods and remove requirements that insurance cover certain emergency contraception.

“Taken together, the policies highlight the many ways a second Trump administration could hamper access to contraception, short of a blanket ban. The impact would also be much greater now that roughly one-third of states prohibit nearly all abortions…

“As part of their 2025 wish list, conservatives want to overhaul which forms of birth control insurance companies must cover for patients at no cost under the Affordable Care Act. For instance, they have drafted plans to allow insurers to drop coverage of emergency contraception, such as Plan B pills, which some on the right believe are abortifacients because they make it harder for fertilized eggs to implant in the uterus…

“During Trump’s four years in office, his administration slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has allowed at least 58 million women to access birth control with no out-of-pocket costs.

“Federal health officials in Trump’s administration also issued rules allowing virtually any employer to refuse to cover contraception in their health plans, a policy supporters of the former president hope will be restored in 2025.

“The administration’s biggest impact on contraception access came from its overhaul of the federal Title X program, which provides free and subsidized birth control, STD screenings and other services to millions of low-income people.

Trump recently left the door open for restricting access to contraceptives like Plan B. 

Interviewer: “Do you support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception?

Trump: “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting.”

Interviewer: “That suggests that you may want to support some restrictions? Like the morning after pill?

Trump: “You know, things really do have a lot to do with the states. And some states are going to have different policies than others.”

Trump and Project 2025 are collaborating to push an extreme anti-choice agenda to ban abortion nationwide, restrict IVF and contraception access, and allow states to monitor women’s pregnancies. 

Rolling Stone: “Inside the MAGA Plan to Attack Birth Control, Surveil Women and Ban the Abortion Pill”

“The attacks on mifepristone and resurrection of Comstock stand out as particularly harmful proposals, but they are only two of the dozens of ways the Republicans behind Project 2025 envision restricting access to abortion and contraception if they win the White House next year. Elsewhere in the document, there are proposals to eliminate the morning-after pill from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate under the rationale that it is a ‘potential abortifacient.’”

Heritage Foundation: “Conservatives have to lead the way in … ending … senseless use of birth control pills.”

The Hill: “Trump: It’s up to states to monitor pregnancies, prosecute abortions”

Politico: “Organizations including Heritage, former Vice President Mike Pence’s group Advancing American Freedom, and the Southern Baptist Convention’s public advocacy-focused Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have worked behind the scenes over the last few weeks to distribute talking points, circulate policy recommendations and educate Republican officials and their staff about their ethical concerns with how IVF is commonly practiced in the United States.”

Axios: “This is undeniably a Trump-driven operation. The biggest tell: Johnny McEntee — one of Trump’s closest White House aides, and his most fervent internal loyalty enforcer — is a senior adviser to Project 2025. One of the most powerful architects is Stephen Miller, a top West Wing adviser for the Trump administration.”

Politico: “On Tuesday, the Trump campaign sent a letter to pro-Trump, external organizations asking them to attend an ‘entirely off-the-record, private,’ and ‘invite-only’ meeting with senior campaign officials, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO. The sit-down, which the letter describes as a ‘meeting of the political minds,’ is aimed at discussing ‘collaborat[ion]’ and ‘priorities and plans’ for the general election. […]

“By holding the meeting, the Trump operation and the third-party entities could conceivably get on the same page about their plans. Two people familiar with the planning for the event said Heritage Action and Turning Point Action were among the pro-Trump groups invited.”

Politico: “Many of the authors of the blueprint are former Trump officials, and the Heritage Foundation has spent the past year-plus recruiting people to implement the plans within the administration, Scott said.

“‘So they don’t just have a long, sprawling policy document,’ he said, ‘they also have a growing list of staff who are being tested to see if they are loyal to Trump and if they are willing to administer this in his potential administration.’

New York Times: “Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’ This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that ‘the Trump administration… simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.’”