Report: The “State Of The Union” Under A Second Trump Presidency

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As we await President Biden’s annual State of the Union address tonight, where several abortion rights advocates and patients will be in attendance, Planned Parenthood Votes is here to remind voters of what the “state of the union” would look like should Donald Trump be re-elected. TL;DR: A second Trump term would wreak havoc on our democracy and jeopardize all our personal freedoms. He would crush abortion access across the country and embolden law enforcement to criminalize health providers and patients simply for providing and seeking the basic health care every American deserves.

Donald Trump and his allies are obsessed with controlling our bodies by interfering in our personal medical decisions. They may try to shy away from explicitly calling for a national ban but make no mistake: Ending access to abortion and sexual and reproductive health care is their ultimate goal as laid out in Project 2025, a plan for the presidency in the event of a “conservative” victory. The Project 2025 agenda details their cruel plan to unilaterally leverage every tool and government agency to radically change our country with no input or approval from Congress, including by decimating reproductive freedom nationwide. Banning abortion is a key part of the first “promise” in the text’s foreword and  “abortion” is mentioned a whopping 199 times throughout its 887 pages. Nearly every major anti-abortion rights organization including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Family Research Council, and Alliance Defending Freedom is named as a contributor and member of the advisory board.

In case you missed it, here are some of the highlights of their plan:

• Ban medication abortion and reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone — an effective and heavily studied medication abortion drug with a more than 20-year safety record now under threat, as the U.S. Supreme Court sets to hear and rule on its availability. If implemented, Project 2025 would eliminate patients’ ability to access medication abortion via telehealth and mail delivery. It would also block providers from prescribing or dispensing mifepristone beyond seven weeks — which is before many people even know they are pregnant.
• Attempt to enforce the outdated, patriarchal Comstock Act of 1873 to ban abortion nationwide — despite the fact that the Department of Justice, the courts, and Congress have made clear that these laws do not apply to legal abortions.
• "Defund" abortion providers and obstruct access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care nationwide. This would involve forcing abortion providers out of the largest federally funded program for affordable reproductive care, and working with states to block Planned Parenthood health centers from serving patients with Medicaid — denying them essential cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and other services.
• Reinstate the global gag rule and suspend all domestic and global funding for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care — while prioritizing federal funding to groups that promote anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas. Project 2025 also calls for withdrawing from the United Nations and pulling funding from all global health commitments including the United Nations Population Fund.

Donald Trump is to blame for the ongoing abortion access crisis. Because of his first term actions,  21 states — and counting — now ban some or all abortion; and one in three women are blocked from access in their home states. As Project 2025 makes clear, opponents will not stop until abortion is banned and out of reach in all 50 states. From now through Election Day, Planned Parenthood Votes will continue sounding the alarm on the disastrous state of the union we can expect from another Trump administration, and do everything we can to defeat him at the ballot box. While Donald Trump may try to walk back, evade, or lie about his position on reproductive rights, we know what is at stake and we know the chaos, confusion, and havoc he will bring — because we see the devastation of his first term every day and continue the fight for control of our lives, bodies, and futures.

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Planned Parenthood Votes is an independent expenditure political committee registered with the Federal Election Commission.

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