Topline
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claimed at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that the right-wing policy agenda Project 2025 calls for a “registry of pregnancies,” repeating claims he’s made on the campaign trail—but that mischaracterizes the conservative proposal, which wants states to report detailed abortion, though not pregnancy, information to the government.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during the vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on … [+]
Key Facts
Walz claimed Project 2025—a right-wing policy proposal that conservative groups created for the next Republican president—calls for monitoring Americans’ pregnancies, saying Tuesday Republicans’ “Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies.”
The statement echoed claims Walz has made on the campaign trail, saying in September that Project 2025 has “got a national pregnancy coordinator that tracks all pregnancies … You’re going to have to register with a new federal agency when you get pregnant.”
Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services calls for increased surveillance on abortion by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, claiming the reporting system is “woefully inadequate” and increased accounting of how many abortions take place is needed because “liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism.”
States would be forced to report “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method” under Project 2025’s proposal, as well as any complications from abortions, or else risk being stripped of federal Medicaid funds.
The proposal says states should track “comparisons between live births and abortion … across various demographic indicators,” but does not explicitly say anything about having to register a pregnancy or more broadly tracking pregnancies that are carried to term.
Project 2025 doesn’t call for a “national pregnancy coordinator” in those terms, though it does propose replacing the HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force with a “pro-life task force” to make sure the agency pushes an anti-abortion agenda, and proposes overhauling the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment and appointing a new “Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families” to run the division, who would be “unapologetically pro-life.”
Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you’ll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here.
Crucial Quote
Vice President Kamala Harris described Project 2025’s proposal more accurately in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, decrying that Republicans want to “force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.”
Tangent
In addition to monitoring abortions in a more comprehensive way, Project 2025’s proposal also calls for the CDC to stop collecting data on gender identity—part of a broader move away from the federal government supporting transgender rights—claiming that collecting that data “legitimizes” arguments in favor of transgender rights “and encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities.”
What Else Does Project 2025 Say About Abortion?
Project 2025’s policy agenda—which broadly calls for a total overhaul of the executive branch if former President Donald Trump wins the election—is overwhelmingly opposed to abortion, proposing a total focus by the federal government to push a pro-family agenda that rejects abortion rights. The agenda says HHS should be known as the “Department of Life” by “explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care” and having a mission statement that protects Americans’ well-being “from conception to natural death.” Project 2025 broadly calls for restricting abortion, suggesting the Food and Drug Administration should rescind its approval of abortion drug mifepristone and the federal government should start enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant 19th century law that would ban abortion pills and any abortion equipment from being sent through the mail.
Would Trump Follow Project 2025’s Proposals?
It’s unclear if Trump would take up Project 2025’s proposals on abortion or other issues if he’s elected. The ex-president has sought to distance himself from Project 2025 and its policy proposals as they’ve come under controversy, though he does have ties to the Heritage Foundation—the group spearheading the agenda—and could always take up its proposals if elected regardless of what he says while campaigning. Trump has said he wants to leave abortion up to the states and said he opposes a national abortion ban, but has not commented on any federal reporting of abortions in states where it is allowed. Vance, who has strong links to the Heritage Foundation, said only at the debate that “certainly we won’t” create a “federal pregnancy monitoring agency,” but did not comment beyond that on any increased surveillance of abortions. Vance has called for banning abortion nationwide in the past—even as he denied doing so at Tuesday’s debate—but has more recently said he backs Trump’s view that it should be left to the states.
Big Number
625,978. That’s the number of U.S. abortions that were reported to the CDC in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. The CDC already requests data including the pregnant person’s age, state of residence, gestational age of the fetus, race, marital status, method of abortion and number of previous births and abortions, though Project 2025’s proposals would add more data like why people got abortions and impose consequences if states don’t report the data. The CDC’s most recent data is from before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and states started banning the procedure, though reports from non-governmental organizations suggest abortion rates have actually gone up despite the restrictions.
Key Background
Polling shows that most Americans are broadly in favor of abortion rights and the issue has historically galvanized voters since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling, with a series of ballot measures all breaking in favor of abortion rights and races in which abortion has been a big focus often breaking in favor of Democrats. Trump has tried to minimize the issue and said he now supports leaving abortion rights up to states after previously floating support for a national 15-week ban, and Vance, who previously touted his anti-abortion views on his website prior to becoming Trump’s nominee, has downplayed them since getting on the ticket. The senator said Tuesday he acknowledges Republicans have “to do so much better of a job at earning the American People’s trust back on this issue, where they frankly just don’t trust us.” Democrats and the Harris campaign have also used Project 2025 as a key argument against Trump, repeatedly pointing to its extreme proposals as a key reason for voters to oppose the ex-president and insisting he will carry out its plans even as Trump has tried to distance himself.
