What You Need to Know About Project 2025’s Potential Global Impact on SRHR & 3 Actions You Can Take

Project 2025 is a ‘series’ of measures that will be implemented through many different tracks. Its implementation would dramatically reshape U.S. Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), U.S. foreign policy, and multilateral engagement within the UN and Human Rights bodies. It puts forward an intention to withdraw from UN agencies that do not support its foreign policy aims to “protect life” – singling out UNFPA, WHO and UNESCO. It also lays out plans for a massive expansion of the Mexico City Policy (MCP) - also known as the Global Gag Rule - to cover all foreign assistance (including for the first time humanitarian assistance) in a proposal called – Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance (PLFA).

Within Project 2025, ‘protecting life’ (defined from the point of conception) is proposed as a core objective of United States foreign assistance. The plan lays out extensive actions for the new administration to close so called ‘loopholes’ internationally. This means potentially applying the Mexico City Policy to partners such as The Global Fund, U.S.-based NGOs, and to all grants, cooperative agreements, and potentially contracts and direct government-to-government assistance. Plans are elaborated on to decimate gender equality programming and LGBTQI+ support while expanding U.S. financial support for faith based and private sector actors.

AN IMPACT GOING BEYOND BORDERS

The U.S. is the world's largest contributor to development assistance, with $66 billion allocated in 180 countries in 2023. It is also the largest contributor to global health financing at $12.9 billion (2023).

When the MCP applied only to family planning, analysis published in The Lancet (covering 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2001-2008) showed the grave impact on health and human rights, with a decrease in use of modern contraception by 13.5%, an increase in unintended pregnancies by 12% and an increase by 40% in abortion. Other analysis by amfAR shows its impact on HIV programming.

The sheer scale of U.S. financial influence means that if the Mexico City Policy was further extended to all foreign assistance (including humanitarian), it would curtail access to contraception while increasing unintended pregnancies and the number of unsafe abortions in low- and middle-income countries in an almost unimaginable way.

What’s more, the damage of these proposed expansions would reach far beyond SRHR. At a time when funding for essential services in low- and middle-income countries has dramatically reduced, and countries are ramping up the integration of services through primary health care, the expanded MCP threatens even services such as antenatal care and stymies countries ambitions toward Universal Health Coverage and integrated primary health care. It also breaks down community systems and silences civic voices in countries at a time when civic space is shrinking. Communities with the fewest service providers and the most vulnerable would be hardest hit.

LESSONS AND LASTING IMPACTS FROM THE PAST

Project 2025 and its draconian plan for a future U.S. policy under a Republican President is scary, but possibly the most frightening element is that it is already with us. Many elements of it were already tested during Trump’s presidency (2017 -2021) - such as an expanded Global Gag Rule. In addition, during his time in office he transformed the federal judiciary by appointing roughly 25% of currently sitting federal judges, many of whom are anti-civil rights and vehemently opposed to reproductive rights - making it difficult to challenge future restrictive policies through the U.S. courts.

Over the past four years (and during the Biden administration) large scale advocacy efforts by U.S. Christian nationalist NGOs have continued to expand the global reach of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (a global anti-abortion manifesto launched in 2020 by President Trump). American ‘anti-rights’ and ‘anti-gender’ groups have also increased their total annual spending in Africa by about 50% between 2019 and 2022 according to recent analysis by the Institute for Journalism and Social Change (IJSC), with devastating consequences on reproductive and minority rights in the region.

In short, Project 2025 should not be viewed as separate from the existing anti-SRHR movements but rather as an integral part of them and as a framing for it. With that in mind, while many of the worst international proposals within Project 2025 (such as the implementation of the MCP) will be curtailed should Harris secure a Presidential victory next week, other measures will continue to be pursued and spearheaded by a growing and well-connected anti-rights movement. This impresses upon us the need for our progressive movement to organise and coordinate our efforts to ensure everyone, everywhere, can access sexual and reproductive health and realise their rights.

3 Actions that Can make a Difference

As SheDecides Champions, we know that bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights are under threat due to an increasingly organised opposition, reprioritisation of funding and shrinking civic space to speak up to defend human rights. And we’ve committed to countering opposition by convening and strengthening coordinated political action and amplifying the collective voice of the movement, members and allies. There are many things we can do individually but three things we can do collectively stand out:

1. Meet the Moment – The impacts of Project 2025 on SRHR, go far beyond U.S. development assistance, affecting the autonomy of nation states and the ODA of donor countries. SheDecides Champions, particularly government champions, must work together to expose Project 2025 (and related plans) as a threat to multilateralism and to realising global developmental progress both in the ‘global south’ and ‘global north’.

2. Take a Big-Tent Approach - Time and again key informants told me that our movement is fragmented - with some groups only working on contraceptive access, others on safe abortion, some on LGBTQI+ rights. While we often share information, with scarce resources we can be reduced to ‘competitive-peers’. Only a big-tent approach with a coordinated action agenda, where we look out for and care about everyone, can we counter the misinformation and pushback at the scale we are experiencing.

3. Significantly Support the Infrastructure - Progressive gender and SRHR movements in low- and middle-income countries are already leading on this agenda but the ‘tap-on-tap-off’ approach of the MCP is immensely damaging. Substantial, long term funding is needed to help social movements in the global south thrive and to support progressive governments. This is where the victories are being won.

Together we can meet the moment and create a world where every girl, woman and young person - in all their diversity - can decide what to do with their body, life and future. Without question.