By Cindi Branham
Photographer: Charlie Neibergall/AP
This is an opinion article.
By now, you’ve heard of Project 2025, former president Trump’s blueprint for taking over our government and systematically removing our rights.
If everyone we know doesn’t know about this plan and how devastating it will be to our democracy, it’s up to each of us to make sure they understand.
Me. You. It’s up to us.
If we look at the intentions of two areas Project 2025 targets – abortion and health care – we can begin to see what the chosen Christian nationalist white males have in plan for the rest of us. Honestly, this is a 900-page document, so I can only scratch the surface here.
Abortion. One of the first things they’ll try to do is to enact a national ban on abortion. We can all see that coming, but they’re also targeting birth control. Have you ever heard of the Comstock Act? It was around about 150 years ago, and it banned women or couples from using birth control. Birth control, because they see their power shifting and need more babies born, not fewer.
They’ll also reverse the decades-old FDA approval for mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that has been used safely for several decades. Half the abortions in the United States are drug1induced.
They’ll be able to do that because they’ll have taken over all the government agencies, remember?
Right now, abortion is listed as medical treatment and in certain conditions used to save the life or health of the mother. We’ve already seen how abortion bans in states have designated the medical community criminals for even saving a woman’s life.
Women are bleeding out in parking lots of emergency rooms because they were turned away as not close enough to death to be helped.
Every day, women are learning that their fetus has a condition that is incompatible with life, or that the fetus has already died, but that they must carry to term because doctors can’t perform an abortion. In the interim, they could suffer a life-threatening (or infertility-causing) problem. I can’t begin to imagine the horror and trauma of being forced to carry a dead or non-viable fetus to term. Can you?
Close to home: my niece suffered a miscarriage, not her first, but her first since her state enacted a total abortion ban. As frequently happens, the miscarriage doesn’t flush all of the fetus, and what’s left can cause infection and infertility without help.
She was fortunate in that she got through the miscarriage, but with plenty of pain and agony wondering if this new law would kill her, and doctors had already told her they couldn’t help her. This was a very much wanted child. Who is your close to home case?
No one is pro-abortion, but sometimes abortions are necessary. Always, a woman can be trusted to make her own decisions and it’s her private decision. We’ll leave it at that.
IVF (in-vitro fertilization) will be outlawed because that procedure – which brings wanted children to families – leaves unused eggs. And they’re viewed as a life lost in a way too close to abortion.
Health Care. Republicans have been threatening to do away with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for as long as it’s been around. They’ve unsuccessfully voted to undo it over 60 times, but they’ve never come up with an alternative plan.
That’s because they’ve got no plan other than to privatize insurance without the governmental restrictions on what they can charge you for your health insurance. What they won’t tell you is that everyone’s premiums will go up. Remember that those enacting Project 2025 are beholden to the insurance companies – not us.
Remember when insurance companies could deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition? Your mother’s diabetes. Your heart condition. I remember when if a pregnant woman was forced to switch insurance policies while pregnant, the new company wouldn’t cover the cost of delivery.
Remember those times now? Pre-existing conditions will be among the first to go.
They plan to privatize Medicare, taking it completely away from the government, which is not in it to make a profit. Our insurance payments will go up and the level of care go down, because the greedy insurance companies will deny coverage more frequently than is happening now.
People – people you and I know – will die or become incapacitated because of denied treatments. This medical insurance that we all paid for, every paycheck, will be turned into something completely different.
Alabama never expanded Medicaid. Think about this: one of the poorest states would not allow a federal program that would have covered another 500,000 Alabamians and made them healthier for work, school, or life. Project 2025 lays out significant cuts for Medicaid nationwide.
They will slash the number covered under Medicaid and give those remining on it less coverage.
Project 2025 is something we must all take to heart as we navigate this election season. It only happens if Trump is elected. It only happens if we lose the Senate and don’t gain back the House.
So – the 2024 election is absolutely the most important of our lives, if we don’t want to see Project 2025 enacted.
It’s up to both of us.
Still to come: Education, Voting Rights; LGBTQ+ Rights; Climate Change; Foreign policy; and Taxes.
