Project 2025’s Blueprint to Restrict Reproductive Healthcare Is Taking Shape Under Trump’s HHS

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently unveiled a revamped Title X family planning program that signals a sharp turn away from accessible contraception toward a narrow focus on fertility awareness and “natural family planning.” This shift mirrors the radical proposals outlined in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint aimed at reshaping federal governance along authoritarian and socially conservative lines.

The new Title X guidelines emphasize “reducing overmedicalization” and “advancing reproductive goals counseling” that prioritize family formation and fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs). HHS explicitly highlights a “decrease in females’ use of any contraception” and encourages grant applicants to “integrate noninvasive, evidence-based practices” that avoid “unnecessary medicalization or symptom suppression.” Notably, the plan skirts direct mention of hormonal birth control and leaves open the question of whether Title X funds will support contraceptives like the pill in 2027. HHS declined to clarify this point when pressed.

This approach directly reflects Project 2025’s policy prescriptions. The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President Roger Severino, author of the Project 2025 chapter on HHS, called for reframing Title X around fertility awareness and holistic family planning, while removing “religious discrimination” barriers for grant recipients who refuse to counsel or refer for abortions. Severino also urged the Centers for Disease Control to promote FABMs as “unsurpassed” and to stop lumping them with discredited “rhythm” methods.

Project 2025’s coalition partners have aggressively pushed anti-contraceptive rhetoric and misinformation. The Center for Family and Human Rights labeled contraception “one of the great scourges of all time,” while the Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch claimed birth control “devalues” children. The Heritage Foundation’s recent report “Saving America by Saving the Family” blames the “sexual revolution” and widespread contraceptive use for America’s “family malady,” advocating a return to “natural family with married parents.”

This ideological assault on reproductive healthcare finds an echo chamber in right-wing media aligned with the “Make America Have Again” (MAHA) movement. Podcasters like Alex Clark and Allie Beth Stuckey amplify false claims about hormonal birth control’s dangers, including debunked assertions that it alters sexual orientation or causes infertility. These conspiratorial narratives feed into the administration’s push to restrict contraceptive access under the guise of promoting “health literacy” and “optimal health.”

The stakes couldn’t be clearer. By sidelining hormonal contraception and prioritizing fertility awareness methods, the Trump administration is effectively rolling back decades of reproductive rights advances. This policy shift is part of a broader Project 2025 plan to impose authoritarian social policies that undermine bodily autonomy and restrict access to comprehensive healthcare.

We will continue tracking these developments and exposing the dangerous agenda behind the administration’s reproductive healthcare policies. The future of family planning in America is on the line — and we’re here to hold power accountable.