Project 2025 twists the Disability Rights Act to attack abortion – Mother Jones

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Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s guide to Republican control of the presidency and Congress, comes, unsurprisingly, in favor of abortion rights. But in a new Twist, they want to use a central law on the rights of people with disabilities to achieve this.

In the Project 2025 plan for the Department of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino, a former HHS official in the Trump administration, writes:

The undeniable reality of abortion is that it does not always result in the death of the baby, but rather that these babies born alive are left to die. The Department of Health and Human Services should use EMTALA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination against the disabled, to investigate cases of babies born alive who go untreated in government-covered hospitals.

The premise of Severino’s claims is a fabrication, says Marissa Ditkowsky, economic justice counsel for people with disabilities at the National Partnership for Women & Families.

“It’s always worrying when people repeat medical myths to gain political capital,” says Ditkowsky. “It’s even more worrying when disabled people are used as a political football without us being consulted or really being put at the center.”

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is a landmark piece of federal disability rights legislation that protects disabled people from discrimination based on their disability. The activism that led to its passage was derided, if not demonized, by many conservative politicians: In 1977, disability activists and their allies in the Black Panther Party participated in sit-ins at federal buildings to get the then-Secretary of HHS to sign the new regulations.

Using Section 504 to “demonize pregnant people who may seek abortions defeats its very purpose,” Ditkowsky says, because “pregnant women with disabilities are at higher risk for complications” that threaten their lives and health.

The fact that Project 2025 is using civil rights laws to denounce abortion is no surprise to Sabrina Talukder, director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Talukder argues that the project’s research “pulls out the last bits” of irrelevant laws to build a convincing-sounding argument.

“Project 2025 is about using existing government institutions and structures to exert as much control over Americans’ reproductive autonomy as possible,” Talukder said, “and really by any means necessary.”