“Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term that you don’t want is not healthy, equitable, or fair,” Friedrich-Karnik says.
You might have a tougher time getting screened for STIs and cancer.
Project 2025 suggests completely gutting taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that provides sex education and health care in the US and around the world, because it also provides elective abortions. One in three women in the US have visited a Planned Parenthood clinic, which offers mental health support, HPV and COVID vaccines, breast cancer screening, Pap smears, HIV testing and treatment support—the list truly goes on.
Yet Project 2025 proposes disqualifying abortion providers from Medicaid (a joint federal and state health insurance program) and Title X, a publicly funded family planning program that makes reproductive health care accessible to people with low incomes or who lack insurance. Because Planned Parenthood receives a large portion of its funding via state Medicaid plans—about 70% of people seeking care through them are low-income—it would no longer be reimbursed for offering any other services to the millions of people who depend on Medicaid or Title X.
Some states have already made similar moves in their attempt to attack abortion care, so it’s pretty well-established what might happen if these rules are implemented nationwide. For example, efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana caused a clinic in rural Scott County to close down in 2013. The result? The worst HIV outbreak in the state’s history, which the organization says was due to a lack of testing they used to provide. (At its worst, 20 new cases were being diagnosed every week in the county, according to Planned Parenthood.) Similarly, chlamydia and gonorrhea infections surged in Shawano County, Wisconsin after a Planned Parenthood clinic closed there. And experts from the organization say that reduced access to screening, treatment, and vaccines will lead to more cancer cases, delayed treatment, and worse health outcomes.
By the way, Medicaid doesn’t actually cover abortions in most states because of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks the use of federal funds for the procedure except for cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. So access to these other services would be gutted, despite the fact that abortion care for people with Medicaid is already limited.
Emergency contraception would be harder to access—and threats to birth control and fertility treatments could follow.
Emergency contraception, a.k.a. the morning-after pill, is a safe and effective way to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex, contraceptive failure (like a broken condom), and rape. But Project 2025 wants to make it a lot harder for people to access the most effective type out there: ulipristal acetate, which you might know by the brand name Ella.
Basically, the proposal wants to eliminate Ella, which it incorrectly categorizes as a “potential abortifacient,” from the “contraceptive mandate” that lives under a provision of the Affordable Care Act. As part of this mandate, most private health insurers are required to cover contraception that people get with a prescription (Ella, unlike some other forms of emergency contraception, is only available with a prescription) without any cost to the patient. In other words, if this went through, you might have to pay out-of-pocket for Ella, which is at least $50. In theory, levonorgestrel emergency contraception like Plan B would still be covered under the existing mandate only if it’s prescribed. (You can buy these pills over-the-counter now; however, health insurance won’t pay for them unless you have an Rx). But Ella is the most effective emergency contraception pill overall and one of the best options for people who weigh between 165–195 pounds. (Getting an IUD inserted within five days of unprotected sex works really well no matter how much you weigh.)
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